


Blind

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23032609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: With his grace dying after being cut off from Heaven, Castiel offers himself up for the dangerous mission of spying on Lucifer. He hopes this will help the Winchesters stop the Apocalypse and he's willing to stuck to his mission... no matter how much he starts hating himself when he realizes he can't stay away from Lucifer's right hand, the demon called Meg.
Relationships: Castiel/Meg Masters
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	1. Obsession

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Mary! I hope you enjoy it!

The fire licked away at the picture. The edges became darker as it burned away, the faces of the humans on them slowly disappearing into ash. The silence on Bobby’s living room as they all stared down at the chimney was deafening.

They had failed.

The Colt hadn’t worked. Lucifer was still loose in the world.

And they had lost Jo and Ellen.

Once the picture had disappeared completely, Bobby moved his wheelchair away from the chimney and directly into the liquor cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey and poured three glasses, for himself and for the Winchesters.

He didn’t even ask if Castiel would like to join them. It was almost like they didn’t want to speak, like they didn’t want to break the solemn silence they had fallen into after they’d returned to the house in the Impala and informed Bobby of what had happened.

Sam didn’t take the drink. He turned around and walked upstairs. Castiel could feel the exhaustion emanating of him like an aura, like a scent. Dean, on his part, sat down behind Bobby’s desk and took the drink. The two men continued to say nothing; they just kept filling and emptying their glasses systematically. They would be doing that until the morning.

They were trying to dull their senses. Trying to quiet down their pain.

Castiel couldn’t really blame them and a part of him wish he could join them, but he already knew there was no point to it. There was not enough alcohol in Bobby’s house to get him even a bit tipsy.

He turned to leave instead. No one tried to stop him.

The night outside was cold. No traces of snow, but winter was making its presence known already. The sky was starless, just a dark extension of black above his head.

Black. Like a demon’s soul.

_We’re gonna win. Can’t you feel it?_

Castiel breathed in the cold air and closed his eyes. The encounter with the demon had rattled him more than he was willing to admit. He could still see her every time he closed his eyes, he could still hear her taunting words in the back of his head.

The elation in her tone of voice, in her expression, was pure. She was so confident about Lucifer’s inevitable victory. So arrogant. So proud.

_Lucifer’s going to take over Heaven._

And after what’d happened in Carthage, Castiel couldn’t really say that pride was misguided. He didn’t want to admit it out loud and he knew that Dean would fly into a rage if he even hinted at it, but she was right. They were losing. Badly.

_We’re going to Heaven, Clarence!_

He could picture it in his mind, the hordes of Hell breaking down the Gates, pervading Heaven with their very presence. Lucifer had a lot of contempt for his followers, for his creations, but he needed them. They were instruments and he knew how to wield them.

Why else had he left that demon with him?

_Your God might be a deadbeat but mine? Mine walks the Earth!_

He knew what she was, of course. How could he not? There was still enough angel left in him to be able to see past any demon’s disguise, past any trickery. He could see the twisted creature she was beneath the pretty mask of the girl she was wearing. The darkness that loomed right beneath her skin, savage and angry, waiting to be released.

She had to be that way, of course. To worship someone like Lucifer, she had to be corrupted beyond any hope for salvation.

And yet…

He knew why Lucifer had left her with him. He had tempted him, offered him a place by his side. He had tried to make Castiel think they were equals, that they were in any way similar to one another.

_We're on the same side, like it or not, so why not just serve your own best interests? Which, in this case, just happen to be mine._

Why did Lucifer want him to join forces with him? Why did he need someone like Castiel on his side? Was he just desperate to have another angel by his side? Was he just trying to take away an ally from those who opposed him?

He supposed the reason wasn’t really that important. What mattered was that Lucifer wanted _him_.

What he failed to understand was that Castiel’s interest went beyond selfishly trying to grab at power or to avenge a perceived wrong against him done by their Father. He was trying to do what was right, he was trying to save humanity.

Nothing would distract him from that goal.

Not even the demon.

Castiel still remembered what it felt to have her in his arms, the small frame of her body pressed against his. The pure physicality of that moment, the thrilled that he’d experienced when pressing his hand to her forehead, ready to destroy her. He’d never taken pleasure in killing, in destroying something, but he was convinced the world would be a better place without her in it.

He’d relished the flash of fear that had gone through her features as she understood what was going to happen next.

And then… the disconcert, the frustration when nothing had happened.

She’d realized it slowly, but when she had, the arrogance was back.

_You can't gank demons, can you?_

He couldn’t.

_You're cut off from the home office and you ain't got the juice._

What else was there that he couldn’t do anymore? He still had his wings, he could still fight, but for how long? Could he heal his allies if they were injured? Could he prevent his friends from dying if it came to that?

_So what can you do, you impotent sap?_

Castiel had done everything in his power to hide away his despair, his confusion. He was ready to lose his life, to give up his very existence for the cause they were fighting.

He had never considered that he would lose _himself_ to it as well.

That had to be the reason for the shiver that had gone down his spine while he held the demon closer. That had to be why suddenly he was hyperaware of the heat coming off of her body, of the way her eyes looked human but so dark as they fell on his face.

Her face was closer to his now. The space that separated his mouth from hers was miniscule and abysmal at the same time.

He was not familiar with these sensations. He shouldn’t be having them. He was a being of light, virtuous, righteous. Above simple mundane desires.

And certainly above having them for a _demon_ of all beings.

There was a coat of shame now over his confusion and anger at not being able to simply destroy her, but if he was falling, if he was losing his powers and everything that connected him to Heaven, he could blame that for it.

And in any case, he was still himself. He knew, because he had been able to turn away from the temptation, to push the demon away from him and escape. He had been able to make his way back to his friends… to let for it to be of any help to Jo or to Ellen.

But at least he’d been able to get Sam and Dean out of danger. It looked like such a lowly victory, compared to what they had lost.

And he still couldn’t shake the memory of the demon in his arms…

“Cas.”

Sam was next to him. Castiel had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t heard him approaching. That was bad, he realized. It meant that he could be sneaked up on and in a moment like this, when they were in the middle of a total war, that could have devastating effects.

Sam leaned next to him against the wall.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he explained. “I keep thinking… doesn’t matter.”

He shook his head. In human terms, Sam might have been an adult, but to Castiel, he still was little more than a child. A boy who carried the fate of the world on his shoulders.

And yet, with everything that was on his mind, with everything that he had to worry about, he still asked:

“How are you doing, Cas?”

Like it mattered. Like Castiel was a being whose feelings Sam could understand even if Castiel explained them to him.

“I’m…” Castiel started, but he didn’t finish. He wasn’t sure there was a word in the English language, in any human tongue, that could describe the turmoil that was going through his head.

He didn’t need to. It seemed like Sam, with his young age and his human perspective, understood him anyway.

“Yeah.” He ran his hands through his hair, the very image of despair. “I don’t… I feel like we’re running out of options. Like we’re running in circles. How are we going to get closer to Lucifer to try anything else now?”

That was a risk he hadn’t considered before. Lucifer was now warned by their bold attempt and wouldn’t let them get close enough to try anything like that again.

Unless…

“There might be… one of us who could get close to him still.”

Sam looked up at him. He seemed slightly worried and Castiel didn’t have to read his mind to know what he was thinking.

“I don’t mean you,” he clarified.

They discussed his plan for what felt like several hours. Sam was reluctant, to say the least, to let him go through with it, but he agreed they didn’t have much other options at that point.

“Cas, you’d be in immense danger.”

“No more danger than I am already.”

“What about your other quest? To find…?”

He couldn’t even finish that sentence. He didn’t need to. Castiel knew it had sounded ridiculous from the beginning. He had tried, finding God, but it seemed like it was an impossible task. All he got were false leads and deadends.

_Your God might be a deadbeat…_

“This could be a chance to find out more about it as well,” Castiel stated. “Lucifer was his favorite, his most loved son. In any case, he is one of the few angels who have seen our Father face to face. Maybe, by doing this, I can convince him to give me clue on where to find him.”

He knew it was feeble. The entire plan was nothing but a long shot, but then, what wasn’t those days?

Sam thought about it a little longer and then gave up with resigned sigh.

“Let’s wait until the morning to tell Dean about this, okay? He… he’s pretty messed up right now.”

Jo and Ellen would still be dead in the morning and Dean would still be grieving them, but Castiel didn’t bother to point that out. He went inside and tried to find something to entertain himself: sifting through the channels on the TV, skimming Bobby’s books on lore about God, anything to fight the silence interrupted only by the snoring men sleeping of their drunkenness. He wondered if Dean would be upset if he woke him to try and talk to him, but he concluded he would. He was still tempted to do it anyway.

He didn’t like the turn his thoughts had taken when he had been alone in the night.

He couldn’t escape it. Every time he stopped, every time he let his mind wander, she was there again. Her mocking grin. Her dark eyes. The weight of her body with his arms around her.

He didn’t know exactly what was it that pulled him towards that particular demon, but he knew it was dangerous. He needed to know if she had perished in that circle of fire.

And if she hadn’t, he needed to make sure she died. For his own mental peace.

* * *

Dean was also not easily convinced that this was a good course of action, but he didn’t argue that it was maybe the only one they had.

“So you’re going to walk straight into the lion’s den.”

Castiel figured he meant a metaphorical one, as teleporting to Africa and finding those majestic felines would do nothing for their situation.

“I will try to gather as much information as I can,” he said. “About the Horseman, about the places Lucifer is planning to attack with Croatan virus. We might be able to put a damper in his plans yet.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Castiel never knew what went on between the brothers when they did this. He knew it wasn’t possible, but he still had the feeling they shared some thought of telepathic link that allowed them to share each other’s thoughts without saying a word out loud and without revealing what they were thinking to any third party.

At the end of the silent conversation, Dean shrugged and Sam sighed.

“Alright, Cas,” he said in the end. “Just promise us you will be careful.”

“As careful as I could be,” Castiel assured them.

“We mean it,” Dean added. “You’re one of our most valuable players. You saved our asses yesterday in Carthage. If Lucifer finds you and kills you, we’re screwed.”

Castiel didn’t tell him that it didn’t really matter if it happened that way. He was losing his powers and without them, what he could continue to do for the brothers would be extremely limited.


	2. The Traitor

Finding them wasn't hard at all. All he had to do was follow the demonic omens, spread through the country. There were a bunch of them, covens of demons who travelled around or found a nice spot in which to celebrate, as confident of their victory as she had been.

For weeks, Castiel just watched them do terrible things. Killing families. Torturing animals. Orgies of blood and sex, where they revelled in their own violence and depravity. Their attacks seemed to have absolutely no rhyme or reason; they just did whatever they fancied and their capricious nature could mean they could just drop whatever they were doing at a moment's notice and move on to somewhere else or to a different activity. He could never predict what they would do next.

All he could do was stand away, cloaking his presence with the little power he still had left, and watch. He could still have fought them if he wished to. He couldn't smite them, but he still could've sunken his blade in their chest, still make sure to rid this world of their festering presence.

He didn't. Not yet. He didn't have to call attention to himself, he just needed to bind his time.

Find her.

Finally, after months of tracking, of eavesdropping into their conversations, he did.

The Winchesters had told him she went by "Meg", a stolen name from a long since dead girl. Castiel wasn't sure it would mean anything amongst her own kind, but it apparently did. He was surprised. Perhaps she had just stuck with the name because she didn't remember her own, perhaps she did and was careful enough not to let anyone learn it. Names were powerful, especially amongst demons. It could mean their destruction if they weren't careful enough.

She didn't strike him as the careful kind, but for whatever the reason, she kept the name even in front of other demons.

"Meg is being a bitch again!" he heard one of them telling the others.

They were in a barnyard in an isolated farm. Castiel had got there a bit late to prevent them from massacring the family that lived there, but the demons lingered long enough mutilating the animales and causing all around destruction, almost lazily, for him to catch up and listen in on their conversation.

"Right?" another demon answered the first one. "Like, what is the point of the Apocalypse if we can't have a little fun in the meantime?"

"Well, we can't piss her off," a third one intervened, with a little sigh. "Azazel's daughter, yadda, yadda. Lucifer seemes to hold her in high regards, though Hell if I know why."

There were more complaints and whining, but after a moment, the three of them stepped outside of the yarn in the open field. Two of them were possessing men, the other a petite woman. Castiel wouldn't be fooled by her appearance, though, as a normal human would.

He needed to be careful.

He approached them as silently as he could.

"Where are we supposed to meet her again...?" one of the men asked.

Castiel decided to start with that one.

He sank the blade to the hilt on his neck. The demon let out a growl and his body went rigid as his wretched life ended.

The other demons didn't hesitate. They jumped towards him, and Castiel was ashamed to admit, one of them landed a punch on his neck that almost knocked the air out of him. He recovered quickly, grabbed his weapon again and lunged towards his enemies.

They were quick and they were fearless. They fought dirty and ruthlessly, with the certainty that it would end their lives if they lost. Castiel let the instincts and the eons of training as a soldier took over him, dodging their hits, kicking and punching wherever he could.

Finally, he sank the blade on the female demon's stomach. She moaned in pain, but died quickly.

By the time Castiel took the weapon out, however, the other demon had turned tail and was running halfway towards the road, where he would teleport out of Castiel's reach.

He wasn't quick enough.

He hit Castiel's extended arm and fell to ground soundlessly. He looked up disoriented as Castiel grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt and picked him up. The demon's face was bloodied, his nose crooked in a strange angle and his eyes were black and furious.

"Seriously?" he groaned and spat a ball of blood and saliva on the ground.

"I have some questions for you," Castiel stated, matter-of-factly.

"I bet you do," said the demon and he opened his mouth as if to add something else, but Castiel placed the edge of his blade against his throat.

"Where is Meg?"

"Meg?" The demon's eyes returned to their human appareance and his eyebrows raised in surprised. "Really? Why do you want to speak with that bitch?"

"I want to speak with Lucifer," Castiel clarified. "I believe she has a direct line to him."

The demon scoffed for a moment, but then shrugged.

"Sure, I can take you to her," he said.

Castiel was not expecting that to be so easy.

"Just... just like that?"

"Hey, I don't take you to her, you kill me," the demon explained. "I take you to her, she might kill me, but either she or our father might be pleased to see you and forgive me. I'd rather take my chances with them."

"And you don't think I could hurt her or Lucifer?"

The demon shrugged.

"If you can, then they deserve to be killed," he said. "And if you can't, well... it's your funeral."

That was a very colorful way to put it.

* * *

The demon, to Castiel's surprise, actually kept his word. Meg's base of operation was a luxurious hotel in the next town over. Castiel felt the heavy demon presence even before they set foot in them. He didn't have to look at a single face i there to know that every single body in there was possessed by a demon. It wasn't even the smell of sulphur that gave it away. It was simply the atmosphere that hung in the air, the concentrated evil in a single place.

Castiel knew immediately that this was the lion's den. Even if Lucifer wasn't there, the demons simply had him outnumbered.

Two of them, dressed up in suits, stopped him on the lobby, pointing guns at him. Castiel kept the demon he'd caught between him and them. He was fairly certain that the bullets wouldn't hurt him, but he wouldn't have put it past them to have done something to them that would make them dangerous.

"Who are you?" one of the demons demanded. "Archie, who is this?"

Archie sighed.

"That's not going to be useful, guys. He's an angel."

The bouncer demons startled and Castiel noticed that one of their hands shook slightly. They didn't know he couldn't kill them with a touch and Castiel was planning on keeping it that way.

"I want to speak with Meg," he declared. "No one has to get hurt."

The two demons exchanged a look. One of them put his gun down, while the other moved so the barrel of his would be pointing at Castiel's forehead.

It was futile, but it probably made him feel better.

Meg descended from the stairs a moment later. She was wearing the same outfit as the last time he'd seen her: jeans, high heel black boots, a purple blouse and dark jacket. It didn't show signs of having been burnt.

"Well, well, look what the car dragged in!" she said, stepping past the demons still pointing at Castiel with their weapons. She glanced at them and rolled her eyes. "Put those downs, you morons."

"But..."

Meg huffed and shook her head.

"It's so hard to find good help these days," she complained. She walked closer to Castiel, close enough that the smell of smoke that emanated from her clothes tingled in his snow. She grinned at him. "Hello, there, Clarence. You mind letting poor Archie go, so we can speak in private?"

Castiel hesitated, but the truth was that he didn't need his hostage anymore. He let go of him, pushing him away. Archie stumbled, regained his footing and ran away to stand behind the two other demons. Meg looked at the three of them over her shoulder.

"Go."

"But..." the other one protested.

"Are you deaf?" Meg replied, her patience clearly wearing thin. "I said, go!"

The three other demons turned on their heels and did as she told them. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking, but Castiel was willing to bet that they were uncomfortable with leaving their lieutant alone with an angel.

Of course, Meg seemed to know that she wasn't in any danger. She was still smirking as she turned towards him.

"I could really have you killed for the stunt you pulled the last time," she told him. She pulled her shirt up, enough for him to see the skin of her stomach. Parts of it were reddened and scarred, from the holy flames that had licked at it. He could tell Meg was furious with him, even as her tone and expression didn't change. "I like this body. It's all empty up here; no one screaming in the back of my head for me to let them out. If I'd had to get another for what you did, you wouldn't have got this far."

"You would have done the same to me," Castiel pointed out.

Meg lowered her shirt and tilted her head.

"You've got a point," she conceded. "So, what brings you here? You have the Winchesters hidden underneath your coat, ready to try to assassinate my father again?"

Castiel deduced that she already knew the answer to that question, but he said anyway:

"I came alone."

"Did you, now? And why is that?"

Castiel bit the inside of his cheek. He hated himself for what he was about to say, but he needed to sound convincing enough.

"Lucifer was right."

Meg lifted her chin, apparently amused.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. What did you say?"

"Lucifer was… right," Castiel repeated through gritted teeth. "About everything he said to me in Carthage. The Winchesters are out of options and even if, by some remote chance, they were to win this war, Heaven would want my head to roll next."

“So you’re betraying them?”

“Why not?” Castiel said. “I am a traitor to my own kind already. Lucifer might be the only one that would take me now.”

Meg stared at him in silence for a few seconds. She stepped even closer to him, to the point where he could feel the heat emanating to her body. His blood boiled in his veins, but his body leaned forwards towards her, like she was a magnet and he was helpless before her. He clutched his blade tighter. He could easily put it through her heart right now, end with this… pull she had over him.

But he already knew he wouldn’t. Not right now. He needed her to give him access to Lucifer still.

“No, that’s not it,” Meg said, after studying his face for a few minutes. “You’re not telling me the truth.”

How could she know that?

“I am…”

“Not the full truth,” Meg replied. “I don’t trust you, Clarence. You’re sneaky little feathery thing. If you want me to take you anywhere near my father, I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

Castiel hoped his face wasn’t giving away any of the thoughts that raced through his mind. He took in a deep breath (useless, but he had seen humans do it when they needed to calm down) and lowered his gaze to think. Maybe it would look like hesitation on his part.

And besides, there was a hint of truth in what he said next.

“You already know what’s happening to me. The price I’m paying for choosing humanity’s side.”

“You’re turning like them,” Meg said, wrinkling her nose. As if humans were more disgusting than she was.

“I was fearful that something like this would come to pass, but I didn’t expect it to be this… humiliating,” Castiel continued. He looked down at his hands. “Being powerless, it’s just…” He closed his hands into fists and stared right at Meg’s face again. She looked expectant, attentive. “I don’t want to stop being an angel. And as ironic as that might seem, it appears that my best chance for that is to join forces with you.”

“Go on,” she encouraged him when he made a pause.

“You said Lucifer was taking you to Heaven,” he reminded her. “I want to go too. I don’t care if humanity falls anymore, I don’t care if he wants to take over it. I just want to go home.”

Meg kept looking at him, silently. Her eyes moved from his face, down to his body, and then back again. She was evaluating him.

In the end, she smiled again.

“Well, I’m glad you came to your senses. It would have been a waste of a perfectly nice vessel to have to kill you,” she said.

She turned her back on him. Arrogant as always, confident that he wouldn’t stab her in it.

“Lucifer isn’t here right now,” she informed him, making a gesture for him to follow her. “But I’ll let him know.”

Castiel followed her into the elevator. The silver doors closed behind them.


	3. Allegiance

In all of the billions of years he’d spent roaming Heaven and Earth, Castiel had never experienced anything resembling claustrophobia. Not even when had been restrained, not even when they dragged him up home, not even when Lucifer had trapped him in the circle of fire.

He felt trapped now. There was something about the enclosed space that made it feel like his chest was compressing, like his heart was about to jump out of his chest.

Or maybe it was simply Meg’s presence. She was standing a few steps to his right, checking her nails as if they were the most interesting thing in the entire world. But every now and then, Castiel could swear he felt the sting of her eyes on his body, like she was stealing glances in his direction.

It was like being locked in a caged with a prowling predator.

He caught her one time, staring at him, without saying a single word. She didn’t look away when his eyes met hers, she simply smiled once again like there was a joke hanging in the air that he wasn’t understanding.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the doors opened in what had to be the most luxurious suite in the entire hotel building they had taken over. It was on the top floor, with windows overlooking the city at its feet.

“Hope you find the accommodations to your liking,” she told him as he stepped into what was essentially a small living room, with a couple of armchairs and small round table. There was a bottle of whiskey and half-finished glass on it. Castiel could easily imagine Meg lounging there, with her feet propped up on the table, drinking when her minions had come to warn her he was there.

“I don’t sleep,” Castiel pointed.

“What a coincidence. Neither do I,” Meg said, with a laughter. “But that’s not the only thing beds are good for.”

Castiel shivered. He didn’t mean to and he suppressed it as quickly as it came, but he didn’t like the way Meg’s eyebrow quirked.

Like she’d noticed. Like she was machinating something that he couldn’t quite imagine just yet.

He decided to ignore it for now.

“When can I talk to Lucifer?”

“I’m going to go call him right now,” she promised him. “But he has business to attend. He’s fighting a war, remember? So it might take him some time to get back to us. You can stay here in the meantime. Nobody will come bother you and if they do, well, I don’t mind if you deal with them however you deem it appropriate.”

That surprised Castiel slightly. Was she saying she wouldn’t mind if he killed the demons that were beneath her? Did she share Lucifer’s disdain for her own kind?

She stepped closer to him.

“And if you find yourself in need of… company,” she said, imprinting a special emphasis on the word. “You can always ask me and if you’re nice enough…”

The claustrophobic feeling returned.

Castiel couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t her tone; it wasn’t her vessel. It was her, something about her dark soul that drove him insane.

Before he could stop himself, his hand was around her throat and he was pushing her towards the wall. Her head crashed against it with a loud thud. The plaster behind her cracked and for a second, her eyes moved around the room, disoriented and pained. Her body was so small. Her heels hanged a few inches over the floor as he held her up.

“Don’t get confused, demon,” he growled, furious. “I might need your help right now, but it doesn’t mean we’re friends. It doesn’t mean I don’t hate you. So I suggest you stop with those insinuations.”

Meg’s hand was on the forearm he was holding her with. Her nails sank on the fabric of his coat and for a second, he wondered if she was going to fight back. What he would do if she did…

But in the end, Meg managed a simply nod.

He let go of her. Her feet staggered when they reached the ground and for one terrifying moment, Castiel thought she was going to collapse against him. He stepped backwards.

He couldn’t handle having her that close again.

Meg recovered quickly. She wasn’t gasping or coughing (she didn’t need air anyway), but she still seemed… astonished. Like she hadn’t expected Castiel to lash out like that.

However, he noticed something that disturbed him.

A glimmer in her eyes. A quiver in her lips right before her face became an emotionless mask once again.

She didn’t look scared, but… victorious.

Castiel immediately regretted letting her see that she’d got to him. That she had any sort of power over him, even if it was just to enrage him like that.

The moment passed quickly. Meg straightened her back.

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Clarence?” she asked him. She sounded amused, but rattled, and there was no way to know how much of it was her just pretending. “Fine. Have it your way, then.”

She turned her back on him and quickly disappeared inside the elevator. He couldn’t have sworn it, but he thought she was walking at a quicker pace than before.

Good. Perhaps that meant that she was going to leave him alone from now on. This was going to be hard enough without her taunting him.

* * *

The demons were congregated in what had been the hotel’s dining hall when Meg came back down. There were some bodies that hadn’t been possessed when they’d come inside and had been promptly executed. They were still there, laying across the floor or collapsed against the table. They had been there for days. The pools of blood underneath them were turning black and gooey and there were flies buzzing around them. Meg personally thought they were tacky, but some of her subordinates liked them as decoration.

It didn’t matter. Part of being a good leader was to let her followers have something nice for themselves now and then. She’d learned that from Azazel.

She’d also learned she couldn’t tolerate any dissent or doubt and she felt both of those things in the air when she walked in. The two dozen demons she’d brought with her were huddled together in small groups. Their whispers extinguished themselves as soon as they noticed Meg stepping inside.

She raised her eyes at them.

“What?” she snapped.

Kyle, one of the demons that was supposed to be guarding the lobby to prevent any unwanted visitors, spoke up. Simply because it didn’t seem like anyone else would otherwise.

“With all due respect, ma’am,” he said. “We were wondering… why did you allow an angel in here. The Winchesters’ angel, of all of them.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t hear every word I said to him,” Meg replied, rolling her eyes. She was absolutely sure that demons eavesdropped everywhere, except, perhaps in her suite upstairs. “He wants to speak to Lucifer.”

“Yes, but… what if he’s lying?” Kyle continued to ask. “What if he’s a spy?”

“Do you take me for an idiot?” Meg asked. She didn’t need to raise her voice. All the demons in the room shrunk and Kyle swallowed, nervously. “Of course there’s a chance he is. But Lucifer wanted him on our side, so… we’re gonna let him decide what to do with him.”

“Yes, but…” Kyle started to protest.

“Are you going to question our father’s judgment?”

“I… no. Of course not,” Kyle muttered, lowering his eyes.

And that seemed to be enough for the rest of them as well.

“Go back to what you were doing,” Meg ordered them. “And I better not find out who called this little meeting. Archie.”

The demon stopped on his tracks and a visible shudder went through his body. She thought he was going to run, the coward, but he slowly turned towards her.

“Yes, ma’am?”

Meg crooked her finger at him. He approached him, with his shoulders sunken and the gesture of a kicked dog.

“You and the two other idiots that were with you were supposed to come back hours ago.”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” Archie admitted. “But in my favor, we were ambushed by the angel and… you said it yourself, Lord Lucifer is gonna want to talk with him. So…”

Meg stared at him with disgust. Azazel had been right. So many demons were so petty. They only cared for their own pleasure and amusement and couldn’t really see the bigger picture. She had made that mistake once.

She wouldn’t again.

She placed a hand on Archie’s cheek and patted him a couple times, a parody of a maternal gesture.

“Yes, yes. You did good,” she admitted.

Archie started smiling and opened his mouth…

Meg’s knife cut him across the throat. Archie’s eyes opened wide, as the blood started gushing out of it. Meg materialized her chalice and placed against him, gathering as much as she could. Some of it sprinkled her hand, but she paid no mind to it.

Archie collapsed on the floor, weakened but not dead. Meg kicked him aside as she placed the chalice on the table and recited the words as she stirred the blood with her fingers.

“Father, I have news for you,” she declared when the call went through. “The angel Castiel is here.”

There was a fluttering of wings behind her. She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. His very presence was strong enough to fill up the room with electricity, with an energy that made Meg shiver every time she was in front of him.

“Is he now?” he asked as Meg turned and bowed quickly towards him. “Now, that’s very interesting. Do you think there’s a chance the Winchesters sent him to me?”

“Absolutely, though I wouldn’t judge them smart enough to come up with it themselves,” Meg admitted. “Whatever the case, I think the angel came here all on his own free will.”

Lucifer’s lips twitched, as if her saying that was a joke she wasn’t getting. The sores in his face had grown slightly bigger since the last time Meg had seen him. The grey eyes of his vessel were redder, like he was tired, but of course that couldn’t be. He was an archangel, after all. Maybe he wasn’t tired, but his body was certainly starting to look it.

Why couldn’t Sam just accept what an honor it would be to accept to be his vessel? Meg just couldn’t wrap her head around that. She knew she would’ve done anything she asked of her, in a heartbeat.

Then again, it was entirely possible that Sam’s perception was wrapped by Heaven’s propaganda.

“I think we can have a use for him either way,” Meg said.

“I’m listening,” Lucifer said, magnanimously.

“He has access to the Winchesters. He can come up with a plan so that we can convince Sam to say yes,” Meg explained. “Maybe he just needs someone to… push him into it. And who better to do that than his pet angel?”

Lucifer nodded, very slowly.

“That sounds like a very smart idea. And if he truly does this, we can be sure of his loyalty.”

“And if he doesn’t… we might still have a way to get closer to Sam, by… keeping him close to us.” Meg smirked. “Everybody wins. Well, except them.”

“You really think they care enough about this angel that it’s worth keeping him hostage even if he’s spying on us?”

“I believe we’re strong enough than even if he is, there’s nothing they can do against us.”

Lucifer seemed pleased with her assessment. However, a moment later, his expression changed ever so slightly. He came even closer to her and cupped her face in his hands. Meg always felt special when he did this. He didn’t do it with any of the other demons. She, the most loyal of his children, had won the right to receive a gesture of love, of trust.

However, it was different this time. It felt like Lucifer was looking into her very thought, into her mind, probing for answers even as she wasn’t sure what the question was.

“You like him,” Lucifer said. It wasn’t a question, but a plain statement.

Meg saw no point in lying to him. He would know if she did.

“He… intrigues me,” she confessed. “Regardless, I don’t think he’s interested.”

Lucifer lowered his hands and let them rest on her neck.

“And if he was?”

“It would amuse to find out what it’d take to break him,” Meg said, smiling at the thought. She could still remember the way his eyes had fallen on her, how tense he’d been in the elevator when there was so little space separating them. “But I’d never do anything that would endanger our goals, of course.”

“Of course not,” Lucifer said, nodding. “You’re smarter than that. I trust you, Meg.”

Meg almost shivered at those words. Being one of his chosen ones, one of his trusted ones… even with Azazel, she’d never felt so pleased. This was what she had been created for. This was what her purpose was.

Lucifer leaned over and left a soft kiss on her lips, barely a little peck, to signal again that she was his and she was worthy of his affection.

There was nothing better than this. There was nothing worth giving up this for. So if he told her to stay away from the angel, as fun as it might have been, Meg was of course going to obey him. She would never disappoint her father like that.

Archie groaned on the floor. Meg had been so mesmerized by Lucifer she’d practically forgotten he was there.

Lucifer’s eyes fell on the blood dripping down Archie’s neck.

“Well, what have we here?” he commented. He moved away from Meg and knelt in front of Archie. “Have you been misbehaving, child?”

“Please, sir,” Archie begged, pathetically. “I didn’t mean to… give me another chance…”

“Meg, go back to our guest,” Lucifer instructed her, taking out his blade. “I’ll be joining you shortly.”

Meg was glad he had his back turned to her, so he couldn’t see her wincing. She understood he needed the blood to keep his provisory vessel from decaying too badly until he got Sam to say yes to him, she understood also it was a way for him to keep the demons in line. But it still made her… uneasy for some reason.

_He believes Lucifer is just using demons to achieve an end, and that, once he does, he'll destroy you all._

No. Crowley was a coward and Meg didn’t regret giving his name to Lucifer when he was furious after she’d let Castiel escape. He deserved everything that was coming his way.

And she knew that even though Lucifer would be unhappy with what she’d done, he would never treat her that way. Others who doubted him, yes, but not her. Never her.

She pushed those thoughts to the back of her head as the elevator doors closed, bringing her up to the kind suite again.


	4. The Temptress

Lucifer was positively gloating when he finally came to see Castiel.

“I am so glad you saw the light, brother,” he said. “Well, in a manner of speaking, of course.”

Castiel didn’t know what to answer to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“Now, while I am pleased to have you here, Meg is a little bit more… skeptical,” Lucifer said, jerking his head on the demon’s direction.

She stood against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest, watching the exchange with a blank expression, like none of this was important to her. It was so different from the way she’d acted before, Castiel had to wonder if it was an act. It definitely didn’t look like it came naturally to Meg, but then again, what did he know?

“How so?” Castiel asked.

“She believes there’s a chance the Winchesters are still pulling your little strings with their brute hands.”

Castiel resisted the urge to clench his fists at hearing his friends referred to him in such a manner.

“I believe Sam and Dean are good men and have good intentions,” he declared, because it would’ve been out of character for him to say otherwise. “But they’re just…”

“Human?” Lucifer suggested.

“They won’t be able to oppose what’s coming,” Castiel said. “What happened in Carthage showed me that. It’s futile to keep opposing you and to keep opposing Heaven.”

“So you believe I will have to face my brother in the end,” Lucifer said. “Who will you be rooting for?”

“If Michael wins, there’s no way I will survive this. Even if I am cut out from Heaven forever, he won’t rest until he’s made an example of me for breaking rank. For disobeying.”

He supposed that was enough of a good answer. It was the truth after all and Lucifer had no choice but to recognize it as such.

“And the Winchesters?”

“They…” Castiel stopped and sighed. “I understand that you might not feel inclined to do this, but I came here because you are the most merciful option for us all. You won’t hurt Sam and if he accepts being your vessel, in a way he will always be safe. And I know Dean wouldn’t do anything that would hurt his brother. So if he is with you, Dean will back off.”

That, on the other hand, was not entirely certain, at least according to the world Zachariah had shown Dean. But even so, it sounded good enough to be true.

Lucifer caressed his chin with a finger, as if he was considering everything that Castiel was telling him.

“And do you really believe Dean wouldn’t accept Michael on the off chance that it would save Sam?”

“He’s too proud to let himself be used like that. Sam will do whatever it takes. He’s already done it, drinking demon blood and killing Lilith to free you. As long as he believes it’s the right thing to do, he will do anything.”

“You bring up some interesting points…”

“I want something in return as well,” Castiel said, quickly. There was no point in letting him believe that he was there out of the goodness of his heart.

Lucifer raised a hand to prevent him from speaking.

“Meg’s told me. You want to go back to heaven when we attack it.”

“Yes.” Castiel took a deep breath, so the next words that came out of his mouth would be imbued with a confidence he didn’t feel. “I will serve you. I will follow you. But in exchange, you have to promise me to bring me home.”

Lucifer smiled, softly.

“You know… I never understood the hype for Heaven.”

“Why… why do you want it, then?” Castiel asked, confused.

“Because I didn’t appreciate the way my Father treated me,” Lucifer explained. “It was my home too and the way I was just… expelled from it, like I was nothing, like I wasn’t one of His creations too… well. I just think we should go back and reclaim what’s ours, don’t you? I think that’s fair.”

Castiel stared at him. This was who he had been trained eons to fight? The enemy of God, of humanity at large? He didn’t want Heaven, not really. He just wanted to take it because it had been denied to him.

Lucifer kept watching him closely, expecting an answer.

“I don’t know about fair,” Castiel stated. “I just know I don’t want to be here. If I die, I want it to be like what I am, like I’ve always been. Not fallen. Not… like _a human_.”

He spat out the last words like they were a blasphemy.

“And they say I’m prideful.” Lucifer chuckled. It was a sound that would’ve send a chill down anyone’s back. Castiel had to control himself not to look away and to remain immobile even as Lucifer approached him and placed his hands on his shoulders. “I think you will be a very valuable addition to the team, Castiel.”

Castiel closed his eyes. He only had to exaggerate his relief a little.

“Thank you.”

“Of course, you won’t mind that I put some surveillance on you while we make sure that you’ve been truthful,” Lucifer said. It didn’t sound like a question or a suggestion. “Meg.”

Castiel’s stomach immediately turned into a not. No. Not her. Why did it have to be her?

Meg stepped closer and smiled up at him. She looked… pleased. Like this had been the result she’d been expecting all along.

“If you need to communicate with me again, she knows how to contact me,” Lucifer said. “She counts with my absolute trust and of course, will assist you in what I’m going to ask of you.”

“What is that?”

“I need you to convince Sam to come to Detroit,” Lucifer said. “And I need you to convince him to say yes when I ask him to.”

Castiel swallowed. Lucifer was asking him to betray his friends. Then again, of course he already thought Castiel was a traitor.

“How will I accomplish this?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Get creative,” Lucifer said, shrugging. “But I expect a great deal of you, Castiel. Don’t fail me.”

He didn’t say what the consequences of him failing would be. But then again, he didn’t have to.

“I have to go now. Horsemen to meet, you know,” he said. “I leave you in good hands, though.”

He flew away before Castiel could even register that he was leaving.

That he was alone with her once again.

Meg grinned at him, showing all of her teeth, like a predator about to pounce.

“We’re going to have so much, you and I, Clarence.”

Castiel hated her more than ever before.

* * *

Meg hadn’t expected that babysitting the angel would be boring. There were a few times when it wasn’t, of course, because Castiel really knew how to get in trouble with his brethren. And of course, there were moments when he was away talking with Dumb and Dumber, moments where she couldn’t go with him lest they’d get suspicious of the double game Castiel was playing.

But when it came to the planning and the strategizing… well, Castiel’s voice wasn’t the most melodious thing to listen to.

“They have to believe that they’re truly out of options,” he said over and over. “Otherwise, Sam will not…”

“Yes, I heard you the fifteen first times you said it,” Meg replied.

They were in a motel lost in the middle of nowhere, in the next town over where the Winchesters were working a case. Something related to ghost, or maybe it was witches. Meg hadn’t really paid attention to which it was when Castiel had told her.

They were never far behind them and Meg hated coming with him to these places. They were cheap, they were falling apart and they smelled. She knew she was from hell, but damn, they should consider locking people away in those rooms for days as a form of torture.

“Can I ask you something?”

Castiel stood close by the door, like he was readying himself to leave. Meg had noticed he did that a lot, staying away from her as if her very closeness could somehow harm him or distract him.

He also very rarely looked at her directly. He preferred to look at the floor, or right above her head. Like something bad would happen if he looked at her in the eye.

It has highly entertaining and she had very few options of entertainment those days.

“What is it?”

“Don’t you ever just… do something for fun?” Meg sat on the bed, crossing her legs. “You rebelled. You left heaven behind. You left the Winchesters and their weird hang-ups behind. You could do whatever you want and yet you’re here, stuck in this room with little old me, talking about things neither of us can figure out how to do.”

“What is your point?”

“I think you need a break,” Meg stated, simply. “I know I do.”

Castiel frowned at her, as if the very concept of “a break” was something completely foreign to him.

“This is important. Lucifer said…”

“I know what he said,” Meg groaned. “And you really think I don’t care about what my father wishes? But it’s been two weeks since you showed up like a kicked puppy at my door and we’re nowhere closer to getting it.”

“I am not newborn canine,” Castiel stated.

Meg laughed. She couldn’t help it. That was his take away from everything she’d just said?

“My point is, you rebelled, Castiel. You’re working for Lucifer. The least you could is… indulge yourself.”

Castiel blinked at her.

“That’s… funny,” he said, but as always, there was no trace of amusement in his voice. “Dean said something similar to me not long ago.”

“Well… broken clocks and all that.”

Meg laid back on the bed. She didn’t mean to, but her shirt lifted up a little, revealing a bit of her stomach. She noticed the way Castiel’s entire body stiffened and how he stepped away, to look outside of the window.

“I don’t believe this is a time to be having… fun,” he stated.

Interesting how she made him nervous. Meg reveled in it a little.

“That sucks for you. I’ve been having fun nonstop since Lucifer came out of the Cage.”

“Of course you would,” Castiel said. “You’re an abomination.”

“Oh, Clarence,” Meg sighed. “You should know that kind of talk gives a girl… ideas.”

Castiel said nothing. He remained with his back towards Meg, looking out of the window as if the motel’s parking lot was the most interesting view in the entire world.

Meg decided she’d had enough. She’d had enough of the tension in the room whenever they were alone. She was tired of him avoiding her. And she was oh, _so_ sick of this waiting around for him to do something. _Anything_.

She remembered the way he’d looked at her when they met in the circle of fire. She remembered his eyes, the frustration, the realization. There had been something dark, something almost animal within that gaze. She’d seen it again when he’d attacked her in the hotel. She was sure she could bring it out in him again if she just… played her cards correctly.

And God, she was more than willing to do anything to get that Castiel out again. The one that had stared at him with barely suppressed hunger, the one that was the reason he kept his distance with her now.

Because that Castiel… it did _things_ to her.

She was a demon, a creature of pure desire, of pure impulse. She felt absolutely no remorse. Lucifer had been right. She liked the angel. She wanted him. And she was not above doing whatever it took to get him.

She thought about the feeling of his arms around her waist. The thrill of fear that had invaded her when he put his hand on her forehead, so certain that was her end. The heat of the holy flames licking at her skin…

Her fingers undid the buttons of her jeans. Her hands slid down her black thong, looking for the sensitive flesh there as her mind repeat the scene of the circle of fire, over and over.

She didn’t suppress the moan that rose to her throat. It got the job done.

Castiel turned around towards her, his eyes wide and his entire body tense.

“What are you doing?” he asked, half scandalized, half confused.

“What does it look like?” Meg shot back, without stopping the moving of her fingers in her most sensitive areas. “I’m… having some fun…”

She sank a finger into herself and arched her back as the pleasure began mounting up. She was thinking of him, of the way his hot breath had tingled in her cheek, of how close his lips had been to her mouth, yes, even of the way of his feet on her back. He wasn’t a wimp like the other angels, no, he was something else. Stronger than her and dangerous, and she could want _him_. She didn’t have to respect him the way she did Lucifer; she was allowed to want to do unspeakable things to him…

He had stepped closer to the bed now. His gaze smoldered over her skin. His lips were parted, like his breath had got caught in his throat.

Meg slid her free hand underneath her shirt and pinched her hardened nipple. She sighed with pleasure again and smiled at the angel.

“You want in?” she offered. “’Cause I wouldn’t mind going for a ride with you, Clarence.”

He stood where he was frozen, but Meg kept moving, working her hands over her sensitive spots, letting her gasps for air grow louder. She didn’t want to come, not yet, not until she saw what he was going to do, but damn, his blue eyes were darkening and he was taking another step closer, like he couldn’t resist, like he knew it was wrong, a sacrilege, for him to want her…

And yet he couldn’t help himself.

Knowing that was gave her the most pleasure. Knowing that for all his might, he was powerless as he knelt between her legs, as he grabbed her wrists and pulled them away from her body. He held them down above her head and Meg looked up at his flushed face, smiling.

Waiting for him to make a move.

She could feel the hard edge of his erection pressing against her thigh, the tension as he held himself away from her.

The want in his eyes. God, it was delicious. It was torture. Her cunt was wet and uncomfortable, aching for release and she was going to have this angel, now, one way or the other.

She moved up, going in for a kiss…

And found herself sitting up on an abandoned bed, on an empty room. She hadn’t even heard the fluttering of his wings when he flew away, but that might have been because of the blood rushing in her ears.

“Clarence?” she called out, but it was obvious he wasn’t there. “Oh, come on!”

Maybe she misinterpreted. Not that he wanted her, of course. That was obvious, no matter how much he tried to hide it or pretend like it wasn’t true. No. She’d thought he wasn’t a complete coward, that he would be bold enough to just… take what he wanted. He had no restraints anymore, so why was he holding back?

She laid back down on the bed, frustrated. She was going to have to plan her revenge for this, of course.

But for now, it seemed like she was going to have to finish what she started on her own.


	5. Fallen

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

Both the brothers turned towards him. They seemed surprised, if not a little bit upset by what he was telling them, but Castiel didn’t regret saying those words out loud. He felt relieved to having said them. Confession was good for the soul.

“Cas, this was your idea,” Dean reminded him.

“Yes, I know. But…”

“Lucifer is going to get suspicious if you back down now,” Dean said. “He said he was waiting for proof that you were really on his side, but if you outright refuse to get it, he’s going to know that you went there to spy and he ain’t gonna be happy about it.”

“I know,” Castiel repeated.

He fidgeted with the edge of his coat and thought about telling them. Telling them how not an hour ago, he was on another motel room, not different than this one, watching as Meg writhed and moaned on the bed, so inviting and so disdainful at the same time. He thought about confessing to them how hard it had been to hold back, to resist her, how his body had moved seemingly out of its own volition.

There was a part of him, in the depths of his mind, that kept shouting at him, warning him that what he was about to do was dangerous and wrong, a sacrilege, blasphemous, a betrayal even worse than the ones he’d already committed. And yet, he’d been unable to stop himself. He’d been unable to hold back. He wanted her to stop. That’s what he told himself. He’d gone to her and grabbed her because he wanted to make her to stop and he was going to tell her never to do anything like that in his presence again, that she was a disgusting creature, that he would never…

But then the touch of her skin, the musk of her arousal (she smelled like a woman, how did she smell so much like a simple woman? How was she able to masquerade herself like that?)… it had all been so overwhelming.

He’d fled, like a coward. He’d fled somewhere deserted, isolated, where he could fall on the ground and breathe the clean air and berate himself, berate his body for having reacted that way to her.

It had been too much. He needed to tell this to the Winchesters. Dean would make a few jokes. Sam, perhaps, would understand the pull that demon had on him. They would both tell him that he needed to stop before he… compromised himself.

He just needed to swallow his own shame and tell them. It was so simple, yet so difficult…

“Besides, it’s giving us some results, Cas,” Sam added.

Those words blew down everything that Castiel meant to say.

“It is?”

“You said there was an influx of demons going to Sioux Falls, right?” Sam said and turned around his computer so both Dean and Castiel could read the screen. “Well, there’s definitely something weird going on there. Two people… killed each other.”

“Tragic, but not our kind of thing…”

“They ate each other to death, Dean.”

Dean stopped what he was saying and nodded.

“Yeah, okay, that definitely sounds like our kind of thing.”

“Possession, maybe? Demons… entertaining themselves? Because that sounds pretty sick,” Sam pointed out. “Like something they would absolutely do.”

“Well, only one way to find out,” Dean said. He stood up and picked up his jacket from the back of his chair. “You coming, Cas, or do you need to report yourself to your new boss?”

Castiel thought about it. Well, perhaps Sam was right. Perhaps the torment he was going through was yielding results and if that was the case, then maybe it was worth it. He would go to the town with them, he would see whatever strange occurrences were happening there ceased. Seeing the people he was trying to save would give him the strength to keep resisting Meg’s games.

“No. I’m coming with you.”

* * *

Meg was on her second bottle of whiskey. She had been calling Castiel’s cellphone nonstop, but the bastard was not picking up.

When he’d first left, Meg wasn’t worried. She knew she was supposed to be keeping an eye on him, but even so, Castiel had taken leaves of absence before, because if he just cut the Winchesters cold turkey of his wonderful presence, they might get suspicious. However, he’d always let her know when that would be so she wouldn’t call him and give him away.

This time, he’d run away and there was no telling when he was going to come back or what he’d do when he did. Was he going to tell on her to Lucifer? Was Lucifer going to take her off Castiel’s case? God, she hoped no. Not only because messing with Castiel’s head was too fun to stop, but because she didn’t Lucifer to look at her and thought she had been too distracted to get the job done.

She didn’t want to disappoint him.

She was back in the hotel’s suite, pacing around to try and keep calm and think. Should she send demons to look for the angel? No, definitely not. If she was going to have to canvass the world to find him, that was a job she was going to have to do herself…

She turned around and found that it wasn’t going to be necessary after all. Castiel was standing in the middle of the room.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Meg asked him. “Look, I know I was messing with you, but you can’t just disappear on me like that…”

He didn’t let her continue.

He stalked towards, long strides, confident steps. He grabbed her by the waist and picked her up. Meg yelped, as the only thing she could do was to grab unto his neck. Her back collapsed against the nearest wall, the air was knocked out of her lungs.

She didn’t have time to wonder what the hell was going before his mouth crashed against hers. Inelegant, desperate. Meg’s instincts took over and she opened her mouth to let his tongue in. He tasted like something dark and strange, metallic. Like blood.

His hands were all over her, pulling down from her jacket, exploring underneath her shirt, fighting with the buttons of her jeans.

“What the…?” Meg muttered, when he finally left her mouth to snuggle her neck. “What’s got into you? Not that I’m complaining…”

“Shut up!”

His hand on her throat, again. Pressing, furious.

His eyes were darker than ever, barely a hint of blue in them. His jaw was tense.

“You…” he growled. “What have you done to me?”

Meg would’ve answered with one of her witty quips, but it was hard to formulate any words when he was squeezing her throat like that.

“What have you done?!” he insisted, angrily. “I haven’t… I couldn’t…”

Meg lifted up her knee straight to his groin. He was hard again and let go of her with a moan of pain. She slid from his grip and stepped backwards.

Not far away enough for him not to catch her, though.

The game had changed, somewhat. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t against participating, but she needed to figure out the new rules.

Castiel glared at him, his hands balled up into fists.

“You’ve done something,” he told her. “Or the Horseman, he…”

“Horseman,” Meg repeated and she understood, suddenly. “You’ve met Famine.”

That made much more sense. Castiel didn’t seem like the kind to just give into his impulses, no matter how overwhelming they were.

Not without a little push, at the very least.

“He did something,” Castiel insisted. His breathing was agitated and he looked down. “I haven’t been able to… you were…”

“I’m what you were craving, Clarence?” Meg asked, raising an eyebrow. “My, that’s flattering.”

“No.”

His hands were now on his head, his fingers pressing against his skull. He shook his head and refused to look at her.

“No,” he repeated. “No, you’re just… your tricks, you did something…”

“I have done nothing but be my own, sexy self,” Meg replied. “It’s not my fault you can’t keep it in your pants.”

“Shut up!” he screamed.

This time, Meg was faster. She teleported just a few steps backwards, with the table and chairs in between the two. Castiel couldn’t stop his own impulse and stumbled into them, falling over.

The table broke with crack and in the blink of an eye, the angel was on the floor, face down.

Pathetic.

“Get it together, angel. I’m assuming you and the Winchesters took out the Horseman, and even if you didn’t, he isn’t here. The effects will fade.”

Castiel punched the floor. It broke under its fists, his knuckles white as marble. It was a good thing they had taken over the hotel, because otherwise, the amount of things they were breaking in that suite alone…

He breathed in slowly, in and out, while Meg got closer to him and crouched right next to him.

Within his reach.

He didn’t try to grab her again, though. He slowly raised his eyes at her, but even if his lower lip was still trembling and his pupils were dilated, he had finally seemed to have regained some composure.

“You…”

“I’ve told you, I’m interested,” Meg said, with a shrug. “But not like this.”

“Like… like this?” he repeated, blinking at her, disconcerted. He seemed to be slowly recovering his wits.

Meg put a hand on his chin and gently pull his head up so he would be looking up at her.

“When you come to me… and you _will_ come to me,” she stated, “I want you to be in your right me. I want you to be perfectly aware of what you’re doing. I want you to have nothing to blame, no excuses to make for your behavior.”

Castiel closed his eyes. His fists trembled, his entire body seemed to shudder.

But he stayed immobile.

“Why?”

“Because—” Meg grinned. “—it’ll be so much fun if you know exactly how low you’ve fallen.”

She leaned closer to him and left a quick peck on his lips. When Castiel opened his eyes again, the maddened lust from before was gone, replaced only with just a raging fury.

“Bitch!”

Meg disappeared before he could make a move.

Laughing.

Oh, she did so enjoy torturing him.


	6. Crave

Lucifer wasn’t happy to hear they had lost yet another Horseman, but he was very interested in Castiel’s report of the Winchesters’ behavior.

“You say he drank the blood again?” he asked, his eyes lightening up with sheer interest.

“The crave is still in him,” Castiel said. He kept his emotions at bay. He felt like he was throwing Sam under the bus, betraying him even worse than before by revealing his weaknesses like that to their worst enemy.

But it was necessary. He had to remind himself of that constantly.

It was necessary. All of it was, to defeat him.

“That is very interesting!”

Lucifer looked horrible when his face was resting. No one who’d known him would have had any doubt that he wasn’t human, simply because his expression was so often blank. It was as if he’d simply hadn’t learned to use the muscles in his face to make a face that would look remotely human. Castiel wondered sometimes if he looked like that, if Lucifer was simply so alien to him now because of all the time he’d spent around humans or if it was something intrinsic to the archangel.

But as bad as it was then, it was even worse when he tried to express any emotion. His grins, his bursts of satisfied laughter, were chilling.

“Very interesting indeed!” Lucifer said, clapping his hands like a child excited for a present he was getting. “So, this is definitely something we can exploit!”

“You didn’t think Sam had simply… got over his addiction,” Castiel said, frowning.

“Oh, no. But I thought he was too stubborn to relapse.” Lucifer caressed his chin. “Now, the memory of how powerful he was while on the stuff is fresh in his mind, even if Dean succeeds in detoxing him. It’s going to be easier to… tempt him.”

He turned around to look at Meg, who was standing against the wall with her arms over her chest. She stood up with her back straight again, looking at them both with expectation.

“Should I start gathering the forces?”

“Yes. Cas, you’re going to lead them into a little trap on their own,” Lucifer instructed.

Castiel shuddered at him calling him by the nickname, like he was another of his friends, like he had any right to.

“A trap?”

“Dean is going to get very badly injured, which Meg will make sure of,” Lucifer continued, with a nod in her direction. “Life-threatening, but not quite enough to kill him.”

“Oh, that’s going to be my pleasure,” Meg said, with a smile.

“And you, fallen as you are, with your powers fading, won’t be able to heal him,” Lucifer continued. “You’ll try to. You’re honorable Castiel, their friend, their guardian angel. Of course you’re going to try to save Dean.”

“But I won’t be able to,” Castiel said, simply following the logic that Lucifer was laying out in front of him. “And that’s when… you’ll swoop in with the offer to save Dean. If only Sam says yes.”

Lucifer’s smile grew even wider.

“Meg, be a good girl and start getting the troops ready,” he ordered her. “Castiel and I will tune in the details.”

Meg stepped away from the wall and moved towards the door. There was a smile in her face, a glint of… something in her eyes. Excitement. Anticipation.

Castiel couldn’t know what she was thinking. After he’d lost control around her the night before…

“I suggest you get it out of your system now,” Lucifer said, startling him. “She’s going to be dead very soon.”

The nonchalant tone in his voice was what truly alerted Castiel.

“What do you…?”

“Sam is going to need to drink a few gallons of demon blood to contain me,” Lucifer said. “It’ll just so happens he’ll have some right there in front of him.”

“You’re… you’re sending them into a slaughter,” Castiel understood, suddenly.

Lucifer sat back in one of the chairs of the restaurant and propped his feet up on the table.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental over a few demons,” he said, with a smirk. “Well, just the one demon, from what I gather.”

Castiel didn’t know what to say. he was right, they were just demons and he shouldn’t care if he happened to die in this little ruse. But at the same time, he couldn’t understand why Lucifer wasn’t more bothered by it.

“They obey your orders blindly. They believe in you, and you will just…”

“I’ll make whatever sacrifices are necessary to take what’s mine. I figured you of all people would understand that, Castiel. You are throwing the Winchesters under the bus for a shot to go back to heaven, after all.”

“That is different.”

“How so?”

Castiel struggled to find the words for a moment. Then he thought about Meg, in how she spoke about Lucifer, with that almost fanatical glimmer in her eyes.

“They’re not my children.”

Lucifer’s laughter chilled Castiel to the bone.

“Children!” he repeated. “Do you have any idea why I created them?”

He stood up and started pacing the room and gesticulating while he explained:

“I was trying to put a point to our own Father, Castiel. I was trying to show him how easily humans can break, how easily they can be tempted. I told that first woman that she should be a queen, that she should be equal to her husband and she came to me voluntarily. I told the second to bit an apple and the dumb bitch did. With enough pain and a touch of Darkness, they can all become monsters. Some of them were so before they even went through the rack.” He shook his head. “Is it my fault He made humans so… fragile?”

Castiel had never thought about it that way. Not about what Lucifer was saying; those were just the ramblings of a jealous, bitter creature. But about how demons were mere human souls that had been corrupted. Could the process be reversed? Could they be cleansed?

Could he save Meg from her own dark nature?

Why did it matter if he could?

“Castiel?”

Castiel blinked at him again. Lucifer was looking at him, still with that smile in his lips.

“You want her, don’t you?”

“No,” Castiel said, as his thoughts immediately started racing in his mind. How had he known? Castiel had been so careful to keep his feelings at bay, to hide everything that he thought of her. Had Meg told him how he’d come back half-maddened from his encounter with Famine? Had she…?

“It doesn’t really matter if you do,” Lucifer continued, with a shrug. “In the end, to get back to heaven, we’re going to have to… cut off the dead weight. But no one should tell you how to spend your time meanwhile.”

“I don’t want anything to do with her,” Castiel said, as convincingly as he could. For what that was worth to the Father of Lies.

“Of course,” Lucifer said. His tone was as mocking as Meg’s, if not more. “I’m just telling you, I wouldn’t judge you if you did. We all have our weaknesses.”

Castiel had the visceral feeling this was some sort of test. That a lot of things hanged in the balance, depending on his answer.

“Perhaps,” he said, slowly. “But _we_ are not made of the same… what was the word you used? Fragile, material as humans.”

Lucifer raised his chin. He seemed pleased.

“That we aren’t, brother.”

Castiel wouldn’t realize until much later that Lucifer had only used that word to refer to the other archangels before.

* * *

“Try not to screw it up.”

“Sam, come on. Like it’s going to be _that_ complicated,” Dean replied.

Castiel wasn’t too sure about the brothers’ confidence going into “the trap”. It was as if they felt that just knowing it was a trap was going to help them win the fight. He had felt compiled to confess to them that he couldn’t smite demons anymore, so if things were to get complicated, he might not have been as helpful as they were counting on.

They had both assured him it would be fine.

“Besides, we need you there for show time,” Dean pointed out.

He seemed almost excited that he was going to have to act like he was dying, and that very concerning.

“The objective is to kill as many of these demons as possible,” Castiel reminded them. “If some of them run away, you shouldn’t go after them. We just need to make Lucifer believe that his trap failed.”

“Yes, yes, whatever you say,” Dean said. He parked the Impala in front of the old, abandoned house where the demons were waiting for them and opened the glove compartment. “But if I have the chance to stick this into that bitch, that’s just going to be a plus.”

The demon killing knife glinted in the morning light.

Castiel didn’t know where his sudden apprehension came from. He was on the same page as Sam and Dean. Meg was just another of Lucifer’s servants, one of his most loyal ones at that. She had been tempting and scornful from the first time he’d met her. He should want her dead.

He _had_ to want her dead.

She would want him dead if she found out he was playing Lucifer and warned the Winchesters of what was about to happen. Her loyalty to her father came before whatever game she was playing with him to keep herself entertained. If the roles were reversed, if she had the chance to betray him to advance her cause, she wouldn’t hesitate to do so.

So… why was he? Where did these doubts come from?

“Cas?”

Cas snapped out of his thoughts.

The trapped had been set in a rather isolated farmhouse, no neighbors to be seen in several miles. They were standing right in front of the garden’s gate. They would just have to cross the garden, go into the house and confront the demons that laid in wait for them. The place was eerily quiet, not a single movement to be seen on their windows.

They were not patient creatures, but they were doing an upstanding job of staying still. Castiel had to imagine Meg ad threatened their lives if any of them gave away their positions too soon.

Not that it would matter in the end.

Sam was talking to him, so Castiel forced himself to pay attention.

“Listen, I know you are distraught about what is happening to you,” he said. “I would be too. But before we go in there, you need to be at the top of your game, okay? We can’t afford any mistakes.”

They couldn’t afford him thinking of Meg anything other than an enemy. He couldn’t afford to want her. He couldn’t afford any compassion towards her.

Sam was right, of course.

“I understand. I will be right behind you,” Castiel promised.

“Alright, well,” Dean replied, handing Castiel a rock salt shotgun. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“We need to get off the road, Dean,” Castiel pointed out.

The brothers exchanged a look and Castiel understood he had said one of those things that didn’t really make sense to humans. He was going to have to get used to that.

Again.

They headed towards the door, guns in hand.

Headed towards what he hoped would be the last time he ever saw the demon that was threatening to make him fall.

Sam and Dean barely stepped inside when hands came from the inside, grabbing them by the shoulders and pulling them. Castiel was a few steps behind them, but he hurriedly trotted behind them. He’d barely stepped through the doorway and raised the shot gun when…

… a strong hit descended on the back of his head. He fell to his knees and the gunshot slipped from his hands.

A pair of black, high heel boots strode into his line of vision.

“Well, well, well, Clarence,” Meg’s voice purred as she crouched over to smile at his face. “Looks like we’re going to have some fun after all.”

This has not started well.


	7. Failure

The demons had moved faster than they’d expected them to. They were seven in total, counting Meg, all of them with tall and muscular male vessels. Demons were already stronger than the average human, so they didn’t need the added height or strength. Castiel wondered if they had chosen those vessels simply for the effect.

The house seemed to have actually been lived in until recently. They were in the living room, where the couches had been moved to the side to give them a wide space in the center. The room was illuminated and bright with the sunrays coming in through the windows. The shelves on the walls, stayed intact, showing pictures of a man, a woman and a cat, presumably the original occupants of the house. Go only knew what had happened to them after the demons decided to take it over.

Judging by the dry blood on the carpet, Castiel figured it was too much to hope that they had just been asked to leave. Great. Even more deaths that would weight on their consciousness.

Each of the brothers was flanked by two demons and two others were keeping Castiel pinned to the ground. Meg moved around the room, twirling a huge hunter knife, like it was nothing.

“Well, Sammy, it’s so good to see you!” Meg said. “And I’m sure my father will be, too.”

“Keep dreaming,” Sam said. “I’m never going to say yes.”

“We’ll see about that, I guess,” Meg said, with a shrug, as if Sam’s defiance meant absolutely nothing to her. “How about we play a game with your brother and your angel here?”

She signaled for the demons who were holding Dean to step closer to her. They did as Dean fought and writhed between the two, trying to get away, but the grip they kept on his arms and shoulders was too tight. It was like watching a bug struggle on the spider web where it’d been caught.

“Bitch,” he said, the moment he was in front of Meg.

“Very original,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s see how much can I hurt you before your brother here changes his mind.”

She placed the tip of the knife on Dean’s cheek and draw a deep cut over his skin. The blood bloom, red and thick and slid down towards his chin, but if it hurt Dean, he didn’t make a sound to show it.

“Have at it,” he said, showing his teeth in a very aggressive grin. “Sam knows I can take it.”

“Maybe. But I’d be very surprised if he just lets his dear old brother suffer when there’s something he can do to prevent it. Isn’t that right, Sammy?”

Sam simply threw a belligerent glare at Meg.

“Such stubborn boys,” Meg said. She turned her face towards Castiel and did something he’d been expecting her to do almost since the beginning.

She winked at him.

The grip of the demon to his right became slightly looser.

And just like Sam had told him to, Castiel didn’t hesitate.

He slid away and jumped to his feet. The two demons lunged towards him, but their punches and kicks weren’t landing and not precisely because Castiel had suddenly become so good at dodging them.

They still thought he was on their side.

Castiel hit one of them in the neck, as hard as he could. The demon went down and when his partner came to take his place, he grabbed him by the arm and swung it over his head, aiming him in what he figured was Dean’s general direction.

By the screams and the grunts and the sounds of furniture breaking that followed, he deduced he must have been right. He had no time to look over his shoulder to make sure before he ran towards Sam and punched the demon that held him down on the face, as hard he could.

That was enough to free Sam from their grip, enough to get him to roll over, grab the shotgun abandoned on the floor and aim at the closest demon. The others were all still grunt, but Castiel caught a flash of bright orange out of the corner of his eye and he knew right away that Dean had managed to kill at least one of them.

He grabbed the demon he was fighting with by the lapels of his coat and flung him across the room. The wall broke behind him upon impact. It was inelegant, but he needed to make space for them to move.

Sam ran out of ammo, but grabbed another one of the shotguns on the floor and shot at the demons swarming over Dean. Dean stabbed a second one and when Castiel ran up to him, he noticed the two bodies on the floor where male.

“Where’s Meg?” he asked, looking around the living room. He couldn’t catch sight of her before Sam grabbed him by the arm and pulled towards the stairs.

“Who cares? Let’s go!” Dean shouted.

They fled to the second floor with four demons following close behind them.

They reached the end of the hallway and turned around, guns, blades, knives and fists ready. The demons lunged themselves towards them, eyes black and lips pulled back in fearsome gnarls…

The first demon hit an invisible wall, unable to keep on advancing towards them. His friends slammed right behind him and fell to the floor, a pile of suddenly confused and angry demons.

“How you like that?” Dean asked, with a satisfactory smile.

All the demons looked up at the ceiling, at the Devil’s Trap that they had painted earlier that morning when they’d canvassed the house. The circle was too small for all four of them, so they were crowding each other and growling in frustration, but they couldn’t reach them anymore.

There were other Devil’d Traps around the house and with any luck, Meg had got caught in one of them. They didn’t have time to check them out, thought. Four demons together were powerful enough to make the house tremble and break the trap.

“Get us out, Cas!”

Castiel didn’t have to be told twice. He grabbed each of them by the shoulder and teleported them out to the backyard.

“This might not kill them,” Castiel reminded them as Dean looked inside his pocket.

“No, but it’s gonna be far easier to stick the knife in their burned down bodies,” Dean stated, calmly, as he turned his lighter on.

The trail of powder they had left in the backyard caught fire quickly in a matter of seconds, it reached the basement window, where the powder and dynamite had been stock. Sam and Dean ran behind and Castiel didn’t have to look to know that they were falling to the ground, covering their heads with their arms.

He didn’t look away.

The house blew up in a matter of seconds. Rufus Turner’s instructions on how to booby-trap the place so it’d be destroyed easily had been precise and perfectly executed. The brothers had done a wonderful job of turning the trap that had been meant for them unto their captors.

Lucifer was not going to be happy. But then again, all they had to do now was make sure that no demons lived to go tell him about this.

Dean was right. It was much easier to dispose of demons when they were missing a few limbs or charred practically to the core. They represented almost no threat at all.

“Good job, Sammy,” Dean said, patting his brother in the back as he kept the knife sank on the last demon’s chest until it stopped twitching.

Sam looked up and smiled at him, but Castiel feared they were celebrating too son.

“Four,” he said, looking at the charred bodies that lay in front of them.

“Yeah, the four suckers that were up on the Devil’s Trap,” Dean pointed out.

“There’s one missing,” Castiel pointed out. “Meg is missing.”

Both the brothers opened their eyes wide as the realization hit them.

“Oh, come on!” Dean screamed. “How does that bitch keep slipping away?”

“Maybe she’s still inside the house?” Sam suggested, with more hope than common sense as they stared at the burning structure. The flames had devoured the walls and there was a thick, black column reaching the sky.

“She’s smarter than that,” Castiel said. Even he was surprised by the twinge of admiration in his words. “Which means she has certainly realized what has happened here. I need to go to Lucifer before she does, or we won’t be able to spy on him anymore.”

The brothers exchanged a quick glance, one of those that let Castiel know that they were thinking the exact same thing.

“What is it?”

“Maybe don’t go back to Lucifer, then?” Sam said.

“No offense, but we’re no closer to killing the guy than we were before,” Dean stated. “We keep winning this little fights, but we’re losing the war.”

“I know,” Castiel said, frowning. “And the way we win is by trying to stay ahead…”

“No offense, Cas, but we haven’t got much information from you being there,” Sam stated. “Yes, some places where demons might strike, but nothing big.”

“Nothing on the other Horsemen or how to stop them, nothing on the angels and what they’re planning to do,” Dean continued. “We’re fighting a war in two fronts here and we need you with us.”

What they were asking for was perfectly reasonable, of course. Castiel realized that. If Meg had survived, and it was very likely she had, then his cover would’ve been blown by now. It would’ve been foolish and reckless to go back to Lucifer and hope for the best outcome.

But if he stayed, what then? Going with the Winchesters to random hunts? Keep looking into dead ends with the waning hope that he would see any sign of God? Sit still while the world fell apart around them? No, he couldn’t do that. His attempts to spy on Lucifer might have been futile, but they were _something_ for him to do.

And besides…

He still needed to know.

He needed to know for sure that she was dead. That she wasn’t about to come back when he least expected her to tempt him some more.

“I’ll try one last time,” Castiel promised them. “I promise you if I don’t get anything this time, then I’ll abandon this plan. But I have an in with him and I don’t think I should give it up that easily.”

“Cas…” Sam began protesting, but Castiel didn’t give him time to try and convince him.

He knew they would be mad if he came back to them… _when_ he came back to them, because he had made this decision by himself. But he just didn’t think they would understand his reasons for doing this and he was much too proud to explain them.

And if Lucifer knew by then that he was a double-agent and killed him, well… he would be dead anyway.

He stopped at the hotel’s door, surprised by the dark turn his thoughts had taken. He thought he was going to fight until the last second, not just for the world and humanity, but for himself too.

Lately, however… he wasn’t an angel anymore, not really. He’d forsaken his station, disobeyed direct orders. Even if he was, he wasn’t sure what would happen to him if they won, what he would be afterwards. So did it really mattered if he lived or died to see this war to its end?

He stopped at the door of the restaurant. The demons in the lobby had seen him come in, but they were sufficiently scared of him to let him pass without much of a fuss. He could still turn around and go back to the brothers, tell them he had seen their reasons. He could still just hope that Meg was dead. He could still run way from Lucifer and the ideas that he’d planted on his head.

But even as he hesitated, he already knew that he wasn’t going to do it.

He walked in without waiting for an invitation.

Lucifer was sitting in the furthest table and lifted up his head the moment he heard him come in.

“Ah, Castiel. You’re just in time,” he said. “Meg here was just giving me her report.”

Meg turned around to look at him over her shoulder. Castiel froze under her black eyes, under her smirk that was sharp like a knife.

“Yes, Clarence. Come over and let’s tell him what happened,” she invited him. “It’s very interesting tale, no?”


	8. Reciprocity

Castiel didn’t back down. There were no Enochian wards in the building that could prevent him from escaping or depower him if he had tried, probably because they would have the same effect on Lucifer to an extent. So he had an exit if things got hairy.

A gut instinct told him that the circumstances were already dangerous enough and he was a fool that was tempting the last bits of luck he had, but he couldn’t help it. He had come this far.

Was this selfish of him? Was it selfish to abandon his friends in the middle of this losing war? A part of him was sure it was. He hadn’t rebelled out of selfishness like Lucifer had, but now that he had to deal with the consequences of his choice, he was sure willing to die out of selfishness.

He felt like he’d stopped for ages, but neither Lucifer nor Meg said anything when he finally went back to his pace and approached the table.

“Well?” Lucifer asked. “You were saying?”

“I tortured Dean for quite a while,” Meg said, turning her attention back to Lucifer. “Sam didn’t break. He kept calling me some awful things, but he wouldn’t budge.”

Lucifer had a chalice in his hand. Castiel was pretty sure there wasn’t any wine in there. He took a sip and his lips became frighteningly read.

“And then?”

“Sam slipped up,” Meg said. “My demons tried to get him to stay, but he ran outside, to that car of theirs that they’re so proud of, and wouldn’t you know it, they had Molotov cocktails in the trunk. They burned the entire house down with us inside. I barely managed to escape.”

“I see. And Castiel?”

Meg glanced at him. Castiel tried to keep his expression blank and his thoughts hidden behind his walls, but there was a torrent of them going through his mind. Why was she lying to Lucifer like that? Was it out of pride, to refuse to admit the Winchesters had so easily got the upper hand on her? Why wasn’t she telling on him? He didn’t think it was because she was trying to save him, of all things. Her loyalty to Lucifer, to Hell, was greater than any passing lust she felt for Castiel.

It couldn’t be.

Could it?

“He did just as we agreed,” Meg replied. “He did a big show of trying and failing to heal poor tortured Dean without any results. Sam didn’t even blink.”

Lucifer received this news with a stoic face. He sipped from his chalice some more, his eyes lost in the distance as if he couldn’t see any of the two at that moment.

“Castiel?” he asked after a moment, as if he’d just remember the angel was there. “Is this how things happened.”

Meg eyed him, with a smile and shrug.

Castiel couldn’t tell the truth without blowing his cover. But if he agreed with Meg’s lie…

She was taking the fall for the trap’s failure and he couldn’t figure out the reasons.

“Yes,” Castiel confirmed. “More or less. I… convinced them that the house was haunted. Meg made sure to… spread the rumors that it was, so they suspect nothing.”

Lucifer stared at it. The ice in his borrowed grey eyes could’ve frozen Hell itself.

“Very well,” he said with a sigh.

Then, without anything changing in his expression, he stood up so violently his chair fell down on the floor. The chalice he was drinking from shattered against the wall, leaving a big, dark red stain that immediately started dripping on the floor.

Other than that outburst, Lucifer’s fury seemed cold, calculating.

And it was all the more terrifying for it.

“It’s the second time you failed me, Meg,” he declared.

“Does the first even really count if we got an angel spy out of the whole ordeal?” Meg asked. She was still smiling, but the edges of her lips had become tense. She was shifting the weight of her body from one foot to the other, like she was planning on running but didn’t really dare to.

“I gave you my trust,” Lucifer continued saying. He made a gesture with his hand and the table that kept him separated from them flew and crashed against the opposite wall. The crack of the wooden breaking punctuated his steps towards Meg. “I elevated you over all my other servants. And this is how you pay me? With your incompetence?”

Meg wasn’t smiling anymore. Her eyes wide open and her arms were tight against her body. She was almost crouching, like an animal cowering when they see their predator and know they have no way to escape. She looked desperate and smaller than ever.

Terrified.

“Please, father,” she begged. “I know I blew it, but if you give me another chance…”

Lucifer didn’t raise his hand or changed, but his presence seemed to fill up the entire space now.

“You’ve used up all of your chances, Meg.”

His archangel’s blade glinted in his hand. He placed the edge of it under Meg’s chin, pressing ever so slightly against her neck until a drop of blood bloomed on it.

“So why shouldn’t I treat you like all the other children who have disappointed me?” Lucifer snarled, practically in her face.

Castiel expected her to answer with a quip. To beg for her life. She had always been impertinent, she had always been so confidence in herself. Like the Winchesters had said, she kept escaping with her life intact. He expected her to do anything to do anything, say anything, to get away from this predicament that she’d got herself into, up to and including telling Lucifer the truth of what’d happened, that Castiel had been fighting for the Winchesters all along.

But then he saw her face.

There was something underneath her primal fear. Something more complex, more strange.

Satisfaction. And resignation.

Like she’d known that moment was coming all along.

“My life is yours, father,” she said. “To do whatever you please with it.”

The answer seemed to strike something in Lucifer. He drew his blade back. He placed his other hand on Meg’s cheek, the way Castiel had seen him do before, drawing circles on her skin with his thumb. The parody of a loving gesture.

He didn’t think Lucifer was really capable of loving anyone or anything. He knew for a fact he didn’t love his demons.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s mine to take.”

He lifted the blade.

“No!”

Castiel didn’t realize the scream had come out of his throat until Lucifer slowly turned his face around to watch him.

“No?” he repeated, lifting his eyebrows, an empty gesture that pretending to be surprise. “Why not? Give me one single good reason I should keep this useless demon alive.”

Meg had her eyes close and her head bowed down, the image of a martyr that expected and welcomed the killing blow. She didn’t move, even when Lucifer began speaking with him.

“Because…” Castiel started, his mind racing as it reached around for an excuses that sounded even mildly credible. “I… I need her.”

Lucifer clicked his tongue. He seemed annoyed by the interruption.

“I told you to get it out of your system while you could, Castiel.”

“It’s not that,” Castiel replied. He took a step closer to them, but he didn’t dare to go as far as to stand between the two. “I need her for what we should try next.”

“Oh?” Lucifer asked, tilting his head.

“The Winchesters hate her. They despise her for what she did to them and to their friends. If I bring her to them, if I pretend to have captured her, they won’t resist spilling her blood,” Castiel said, thinking as fast as he could. “Sam won’t resist spilling her blood.”

Lucifer lowered his blade, very slowly.

“Interesting,” he muttered.

“You can kill her in order to punish her if you like,” Castiel said. “But her dead can also be advantageous to you.”

Lucifer twirled the blade in his hand. So fast Castiel almost couldn’t follow his movements, he lifted it and pressed the tip of it against Castiel’s temple.

“I like how that mind of your works, brother,” he told him. “Very practical. Very economical.”

He stepped away. Meg still didn’t raise her head, but Castiel thought he caught her staring at him out of the corner of her eye. She went back to her humble position immediately as Lucifer turned his attention back to her again.

“Yes, I do believe, you’d be more useful to me if we do what Castiel has suggested.” He grabbed her chin and forcefully made her look up. “But you’ll still need to be punished before we do.”

Meg said nothing. Her face had the faintest tint of despair, like she couldn’t do anything else but wait. Wait for whatever Lucifer had in store for them.

“You seem to be fond of this demon, Castiel,” Lucifer said, not sparing a glance for him.

“No,” Castiel stated, simply.

“So maybe you shouldn’t be here to see this,” he said. “Go back to your humans for a while, if you want to. This will take a while.”

Meg’s eyes shifted towards him one last time.

Castiel turned his back on her and walked away, out of the hotel’s restaurant. He didn’t know what Lucifer was going to do to her, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop it. He told himself he had done more than he should’ve had by saving her life.

It wasn’t enough still.

* * *

Sam and Dean’s bodies fallen on their beds, with bullet holes in their chest and blood stains all over them were a gruesome sight. Castiel stayed by their side and prayed. Wherever they were in Heaven now, his words weren’t reaching them anymore. He was lucky he was able to even get some instructions through to them at all.

It was a last ditch attempt. He was aware of that, but if it worked, but if they came back with the information regarding God’s whereabouts, there would be no need for everything else. He would get there and command the angels to stop. He would give them a way to defeat Lucifer, the enemy of humankind. He would protect his creations.

He truly believed that. He had to believe it, because he had nothing else left to believe in.

Both brothers gasped at the same time. Sam sat up first, coughing, while Dean looked touched his own chest, as if he wanted to make sure that the wounds had really been healed. The bed covers underneath him had fresh bloodstains from the attack they had endured.

“You alright?” Sam asked.

Dean looked at him. Castiel couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw his eyes darkening.

“Define alright,” he groaned, standing up and walking away from the bed. The back of his shirt was also soaked in blood.

“Dean…” Castiel called out, but Dean simply slammed the bathroom’s door behind him without even looking at him.

Sam closed his eyes and then sank his head into his hands. The very image of desperation.

Castiel didn’t have a heart, not really. He had a borrowed one inside the fragile vessel that contain him. He could start and stop all the mortal bodily functions that he needed or not. He had never paid much attention to Jimmy’s heart.

He did know, because it felt like it was stopping.

“What happened?” he asked Sam.

Sam took a deep, shaky breath in and looked up.

“A lot happened, Cas.”

Castiel heard their story with increase discomfort. How they had followed the axis, how they had escaped Zachariah and his goons for as long as they could, how Joshua had finally rescued them. Castiel had the feeling they were sparing him some details of what they had seen in their heavens, of what had happened to them, because they were barely looking at each other.

Sam was still sitting on the bed; his eyes empty like he still couldn’t understand what had happened.

Dean was angry. Castiel could sense it coming off him, like an energy, like aura. He moved around the room, grabbing his things and tossing them inside of his bag without any sort of care. He was like a caged animal desperately looking for a way out.

“No,” Castiel said when they finished.

“That’s what Joshua told us,” Sam concluded. “I’m sorry, Cas.”

Castiel stepped away from them, shaking his head. He couldn’t understand what they were telling him. It simply didn’t make any sense.

Why would his Father abandon them?

Why wouldn’t he defend his creations?

Why wasn’t he willing to answer his questions?

“Maybe… maybe Joshua was lying,” he suggested. As soon as the words left his mouth, he already knew he was trying to fool himself into believing that. Into holding on to a false hope.

“I don’t think he was, Cas. I’m sorry,” Sam said.

His voice sounded exhausted. Like he too had been completely depleted of everything he had believed until then.

That was what truly affected Castiel. If Sam rally had stopped believing, if he had stopped fighting… could he really resist Lucifer?

He stepped away from then. He felt like a tide was growing inside of him. A liquid, terrible burning in his chest that it took him a moment to decipher.

He felt like crying.

He raised his eyes to the sky. Except he couldn’t see the sky, just the white and grey ceiling of the motel room, with its cracks, with its mysterious stains.

“You son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I really believed in…”

He stopped himself. What was the point? There was no one listening to his prayer, no one to answer to his anger.

No one watching over them.

No one to look for.

He sank his hand into his pocket. He squeezed the amulet for a second, letting its sharp edges sink and mark his palm before he pulled it out.

“I don’t need this anymore,” he declared, tossing it at Dean. “It’s worthless.”

He headed for the door.

“Cas, wait…” Sam tried to say, but Castiel didn’t want to hear him. There was nothing he could say that would make this better. Nothing that would help him recover his faith or change the fact that they were alone.

He was alone.

No one cared anymore what he did.


	9. The Faithless

He went to her. Castiel couldn’t have explained why, what drove her to look for her, but he went to her.

He found her in the same hotel suite where they had been living. She was alive, but… Lucifer had gone overboard with her.

She was naked in the bed, lying on her stomach. She had bruises, long cuts and the marks of a lash all over her arms, shoulders and back, all the way down to her buttocks. The wounds were fresh, as if the day in which Castiel had stayed away had been spent entirely in getting them.

She moaned and slowly raised her head to look at him over her shoulder when she heard his steps approaching her. There was another wound that crossed her cheek diagonally, and her eyes were red and puffy. Like she had been crying.

“Came to gloat, Clarence?” she asked, before burying her face on the pillow again.

“Gloat?” Castiel replied. The idea was foreign to him, simply because he couldn’t think of single reason why he should feel glad about anything enough to gloat about it.

“You told me that Lucifer didn’t care,” she reminded him. “That we were just tools to him.”

She groaned in pain and moved a little, but it was clear there was simply no comfortable position for her, not in the state she was in.

Castiel sat at the edge of the bed, near her.

“You knew,” he said. “About the Winchesters, about… and you didn’t say anything.”

Meg didn’t bother pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“What was I going to say? That I brought a spy amongst our midst? That I’ve been too caught up trying to get him into bed with me to realize that we were being played? Then he would’ve killed me for sure.”

Castiel could understand that logic. Meg moved again and one of the wounds in her hip, that had barely begun to heal, opened again. A single drop of blood slid over her skin and stained the sheets underneath her.

“Why aren’t you healing?”

“Can’t,” Meg said, raising her red arm above her chest. It was covered in cuts just like the rest of her body, but the ones on her wrist had been deliberately carved into an Enochian rune. “He wanted me to suffer. I’m surprised he hasn’t told me to leave this room, because he’s definitely going to get another lieutenant now.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because he humiliated me in front of all the demons that are supposed to follow my orders,” she complained. “And because you’re supposed to take me to the Winchesters to get them to kill me, remember?”

So many things had happened in the interval between him making that request and now that it had slipped his mind completely.

“You’re not going to resist that?”

“What would be the point? If they don’t kill me, Lucifer will. I will either be another necessary sacrifice or he’ll drink me dry or… I don’t know.” She turned away from him, so she was lying in a fetal position on the bed now, and hugged herself. She looked so small, so stripped of all her bravado. “Whatever it is, he’s not taking me to Heaven, that’s for sure.”

Castiel didn’t know what to say. That he was sorry she was disappointed? That he understood exactly the kind of crisis she was going through right now? She had just discovered that her father, the one she believed knew what was better for her, the one she had worshipped and obeyed blindly, was indifferent to her. To her pain, to her desires, to her.

When looked at it that way, they weren’t so different after all. He hadn’t been tortured and humiliated by God in the same way that she had been, but he still understood why she had given up the fight so easily now.

“Heaven’s not all that great anyway,” he said instead. “I don’t even know what it would look like for a creature like you. Would it show you all the people that you have taken delight in killing, all the pain that you have caused? Or would it latch onto something purer in you?”

“There’s nothing pure about me,” Meg said. In any other occasion, she might have said it with a laugh and a wink, insinuating something that Castiel didn’t quite dare to think about. Now her voice was flat, as if she was stating a simple, evident fact.

“You were once human,” Castiel reminded her.

He wasn’t expecting her to laugh at that comment. Not with that sad, forced, awful laugh that she was getting out now, anyway.

“Like it matters now,” she said. “Like it’d ever mattered. Humans, demons, angels… we’re all going to lose once Lucifer has his way.”

So she was still convinced that he was going to win, even if she wasn’t going to be sharing in that victory. Castiel couldn’t say she didn’t have reasons to think so.

“Heaven is empty,” he confessed. He didn’t know why he was telling her this. Perhaps because she was the only creature in the entirety of creation that could understand. The thought terrified him. “The angels are all fighting here, serving a God that has abandoned us. I don’t know why they’re still obeying orders from someone who clearly doesn’t care if they do. The only reason that I can think of is that they wouldn’t want to be like us.”

“Us?” Meg repeated.

“Faithless.”

There was a shuffle to his back. When he looked over his shoulders, he noticed her sitting up. Her small breasts were hardened in the cold air and they had also been slashed and cut artlessly. Her stomach still had the burning scars, with new ones crowding on top of them.

“What happened to you, angel?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “You were so righteous and mighty, so convinced that you were doing the right thing by helping these humans…”

“Nothing happened to me. Just like you, I found out the truth.”

Meg’s lips twitched, a ghost of the wry smile she’d had before.

“So there’s no God or Devil that will stop the Apocalypse,” she said. “That’s great to know.”

She pushed the sheets aside and stood up, unashamed in her nakedness and scars, wincing with every moment and bleeding still. Castiel noticed more bruises and hits all over her body, noticed the soft fuzz growing between her legs. Before, he would have looked away, he would have been ashamed to admit that he enjoyed watching her. This wasn’t _her_ , of course. This body was stolen; chosen to have the exact effect it was having on him.

Then again, his body wasn’t his either. He had taken a devout man away from what could be the last moments on earth he could share with his wife and daughter. Was he any better than she was? Was he better than Lucifer constantly trying to trick Sam into saying yes or the angels torturing Dean…?

Meg opened the mini bar and fished a nearly full bottle of Scotch from the inside. She took the cap out and took it to her lips, throwing her long dark hair down over her back. Her throat and chest rose and fell with every gulp she swallowed. She drank half of it with the same ease a human would’ve downed a glass of water.

“Not enough to get you drunk, but it’s a start,” she said, stalking back to the bed in wavering feet. She sat by his side and offered him the bottle.

Castiel took the bottle away and grabbed he wrist of the hand she was offering it with. He placed the bottle down and pressed two fingers into her marked skin. He still had enough power left to do this at least.

Meg yelped when his grace burned off the rune. She yanked it away, but blinked disconcerted at him a moment later. The pain she’d been experiencing was probably leaving her now, judging by how her bruises started fading and how her cuts began healing, leaving nothing but soft white scars on her skin that would eventually go away too. She looked down at her newly healed body, surprised.

“Thanks…” she said and took a breath to say something else, but Castiel didn’t let her.

He placed a hand on her neck and firmly pulled her towards him. This time, he didn’t kiss her out of desperation, out of some impulse that he couldn’t quite grapple with. It was calculated, deliberate. He’d wanted to do this for some time and he’d run out of excuses not to.

Who cares if he gave in or not? Who cares if he was committing a blasphemy when there wasn’t a God he could blaspheme against?

Meg’s body tensed for a moment, but then she relaxed with a sigh and opened her mouth. Castiel melted against the warmth of her tongue, of her hands pulling his coat down his arms, her fingers grazing the growing hardness inside of his slacks.

“Is that a blade in your pants or you’re just happy to see me?” she asked with a laughed.

He kissed her again, partly to shut her up and pushed her down to the messy covers. Meg didn’t oppose any resistance, like before, like when she’d realize that he was only kissing her because of Famine’s influence.

But she wasn’t reacting like that either. Like she’d touched herself on the bed or when he’d kissed her before. She had felt like a dancing flame in his arms then, pushing and aggressive and ready to take whatever she wanted it.

This Meg… she was just _letting_ him do whatever he wanted. Not even reacting when he covered her breast with one hand and pinched her nipple or when he slid a hand between her legs, sinking his fingers into her to find her center. She moaned softly and opened wider to allow him better access, but that wasn’t what Castiel wanted.

He wanted the spirited Meg from before. The one who had laughed in his face when he’d failed to kill her.

He stopped and raised his head, looking down at the curved body beneath his. Meg opened her eyes slowly to stare up at him.

“No one likes a tease, Clarence.”

Castiel moved the hand he had over her breast to her cheek. He pressed his thumb over the fine, long scar in her cheek.

“Is there something left of you in this husk?” he asked her. “Or did he break you so badly you can’t even want this anymore?”

Meg’s lips tensed.

“What the fuck does that even mean?” she snapped at him, indignant.

“He didn’t just torture you,” Castiel declared. “He took away your fire. You’re empty.”

The anger rose to her eyes so fast he wondered if maybe he’d been too rushed in his judgment of the situation.

“Oh, fuck you!” she shouted, punching him in the shoulder to get him off her. “ _I’m_ empty? What about you? You think I want you moping all over me because your daddy never loved you? You think I want this sulky and impotent version of you?!”

Castiel could’ve pointed out the irony of the situation but he figured it was enough to just rolled off her and let he stand up. She walked away from him and disappeared inside the walk-in closet. He sat at the edge of the bed again, while she kept screaming at him.

“I thought you were fighting for something! I thought you didn’t care what God told you to do, that you were marching to your own fucking beat! But now, it turns out you’re just another pansy angel who’s gonna let the entire universe get fucked without moving a finger to prevent it!”

Her words cut him deep, for some reason.

“I’m not like them,” he said, standing up. “Not anymore.”

Her cackle was cruel and cold.

“You’re exactly like the rest of them! You can’t even function without having someone to tell you what to do!” she shot back. “You might think you’re this big, bad rebel but you’re not even…!”

“Shut up!”

“… a little soldier who can think for himself!” Meg declared, ignoring him. “You’re not even god enough to save your little precious humans!”

“Be quiet!”

The closet door burst open and Meg stood on it. She had found different clothes, a short black skirt, high boots like she liked them, a shirt with cutout sleeves. Her mouth was contorted in a snarl of rage and her eyes were pitch black as she glared at him.

“You’re nothing but heaven’s scraps!” she declared. “Why the hell would I want to fuck that?”

She took a step towards the door but Castiel grabbed her by the arm, pulling him back to him.

“Let me go!” she demanded as he pulled her back in against his body.

“No,” Castiel said, simply.

He was angry too, furious. She had managed to reach deep inside him, past his apathy, past his pain. She had no right to tell him what he was and he was going to prove him wrong.

“Let me go!” she shouted again. She lifted her hand to slap him but Castiel caught her wrist and kept her hands away from him, though her body was now clashing against his. She writhed, trying to get away, but Castiel just tightened the grip he had on her.

“No.”

“Fuck you!” she shouted.

He kissed her. She bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to actually hurt him. Ignoring the searing pain in his mouth, Castiel wrapped his arms around her, ignoring the furious punches that rained down his back, ignoring the way she kept trying to push her. When she tried to bite his nose off when he moved to kiss her again, he sank his face in her neck instead.

“Fuck you, you fucking…!” Meg shouted angrily. “You have no right… you have no idea…”

Castiel placed his feet between her and in a single movement, he tripped her. They both kept toppling down on the carpet, Castiel pressing her body down with all the weight of his.

He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand and she glared at him.

“Fuck you,” she repeated.

“If you want me to leave you here, pathetic and alone like Lucifer’s broken toy, I’ll be more than willing to,” Castiel said, knowing exactly how harsh his words were. “It’s more than you deserve, really.”

Meg immediately stopped bucking underneath him and stared at him, her face still a mask of rage.

“But if you want me to give you what you’ve been looking for all this time…” Castiel slid his free hand up her leg, caressing the soft skin of her thighs. She had not bothered with underwear, which didn’t surprise him at all. “If you want to come to you, like you said you did… you only need say it.”

“Fuck you,” Meg spat out one last time.

She raised her head so fast Castiel thought she was going to hit him, but instead she kissed him again. Fierce and decided.

_There you are._

Castiel loosened his grip on her wrists and let his hand slid down to her hair, her face, her neck. Meg broke away from him to stare with her pitch black eyes.

“Fuck _me_ ,” she muttered.

She didn’t need to ask him twice. He stood up with her in her arms, light as a feather, and headed back to the bed.


	10. Bender

Castiel had to admit that, despite having watched humans for so long, despite being aware what sex entailed for them, he was thoroughly unprepared for the reality of it. And Meg wasn’t precisely a patient teacher.

“Dammit, Clarence,” she muttered now and then. “Not like that.”

And she would move his hand from where it was to where she wanted it to be. He didn’t mind. This was the Meg that he had been expecting, the Meg that had tempted him to the point where he could barely contain himself.

He didn’t want her any other way.

Her clothes came out with incredible ease, like her getting dressed had been more of a ruse than a serious attempt at covering herself. He wondered if it had been just a ruse, if he had done it that with the sole purpose of provoking him.

It was very likely, but her really didn’t care as he was getting lost on her skin.

“Yes!” she screamed when he took one of her nipples in his mouth and gave it a soft tentative nibble. “Like that! Come on, Clarence…”

His clothes were a little harder to get off. Meg struggled with his shirt for a few moments before she muttered _“Fuck it”_ and just ripped it open. Buttons flew everywhere, but Castiel could hardly care as Meg placed her hands on his chest and moved them up. He didn’t know a touch so simple could be so… electrifying.

“Damn,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes at.

“What?” Castiel asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Whoever this poor sucker you’re wearing was, really hit the gym hard, huh?” she said, with chuckle as she undid his buckle and sank her hands inside of his boxer briefs.

Castiel closed his eyes, a gasp escaping his lips as she closed her hands around his shaft.

“And he was _hung_ too!” she exclaimed.

She giggled, a childishly delighted sound, as she pulled down the rest of his clothes, leaving him completely exposed, on his knees on the bed. His erection was almost painfully hard against his lower stomach and Meg licked her lips as a malicious glint appeared on her eyes.

“What are you…?” Castiel started asking, but she didn’t bother to answer.

Instead, she grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him down on the mattress. She sat on his legs and left a kiss on the edge of his mouth. She made her way down his neck, his collarbone and his stomach, leaving kisses and scraping his skin with her teeth as she did.

Castiel just let the sensations wash over him. He had never paid much attention to his own body, but now, under Meg’s skillful touches, it was almost… overwhelming. How every one of his nerves was standing to attention, how the pleasure from it all kept mounting and mounting.

She left a kiss on the tip of cock and he shivered, opening his eyes to look at her. She offered him a devilish smirk before she opened her mouth and took him. The warmth of her mouth, the silk of her tongue swirling around his sensitive skin, it was almost too much. He clenched his fists on the sheets underneath, practically screaming. The lights over their heads flickered.

Meg immediately stopped what she was doing.

“Keep it down, Clarence,” she warned him. “We don’t know if Lucifer is still here, but there are sure some demons who are going to notice if the power goes out. I’m not exactly supposed to be having fun right now.”

“S-sorry,” he muttered. He forced himself to control his breathing. “I’ll try.”

Meg ran a finger alongside the length of his cock, sending another wave of pleasure through him.

“That’s a good angel,” she said, with her usual mocking tone.

She lowered her head to continue what she was doing. With more energy even: she hollowed out her cheeks and started bobbing her head up and down.

Castiel tried to keep his emotions in check, he really did. But Meg’s ministrations seemed almost designed to drive him insane, to heighten every one of his sensations. Her touch, her mouth… she knew how to command his body, how to burn him down, take him apart and build him back up.

And eventually, it was all too much.

The orgasm shook through him and spilled out, sending a shockwave through him.

The light bulbs above the bed burst, sending sparks flying all over them.

Castiel was too busy trying to catch his breath that he didn’t understand for a second while Meg was cursing under her breath and picking up their clothes from the floor.

“What are you…?”

“We need to get out of here,” she said. She slid her hands into his overcoat, that looked comically oversized on her and bundled up the rest of the clothes under her arm.

Castiel was about to ask why (his brain was still foggy from what he’d just experience) when he heard it.

The mechanism of the elevator starting to move. Someone was coming up to them.

He stood up, grabbed the hand Meg was extending to him and followed her.

Demons didn’t fly the same way angels did. He wasn’t sure about the dynamics of it, but he let the darkness that came from inside of Meg wrap them both up and take them away. The suite in Lucifer’s headquarters disappeared before their eyes.

They were now in a motel room. He recognized it. It was the same one where they’d been weeks ago, before Famine, before the failed trapped, before they both became faithless. He stood naked on the carpeted floor while Meg snapped her fingers to turn the lights on and carelessly threw their clothes on the floor.

“Well, this isn’t so luxurious,” she said, opening the minibar and taking out a can of beer. “But it’s good enough.”

Castiel sat down. He was still a dizzy, overwhelmed, and confused in ways he couldn’t have predicted.

“Talk to me, Clarence,” Meg said, walking up to him. “What’s going in that crazy head of yours?”

Castiel raised his eyes at her, slowly.

“That was… a wonderful experience,” he said.

“Why, thank you. I did try my best to impress you…”

“And it was… good. And I would very much like to have it again before the world ends.”

“Now I wish I had an Internet page so you could give me those five stars already.”

“But it wasn’t…” Castiel took a moment to really think about to say this. “I don’t understand why humans are so desperate to have them all of the time. Yes, they’re pleasant, but they are not… why are you laughing, Meg?”

“Really?” she said, between laughs. “Holy shit, _really_?”

“Why would I say something that I don’t think?”

Meg laughed some more, finished the beer and squashed the can in her hand before throwing it over her shoulder.

“Well, Clarence, see… human lives are so fleeting. Of course they’re gonna succumb to lust over and over to have one of those,” she explained, with a roll of her eyes.

Despite her sarcastic tone, Castiel figured that made sense.

“Still.” He stretched his hand and grabbed unto the edge of the coat. “I don’t think it would have been as good… if it hadn’t been you.”

“Is that so?” Meg asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You’ve known it from the start, haven’t you? How much I wanted you. I don’t know what it is about you. Maybe the fact that I shouldn’t feel this way about you, that it should horrify me. And it did, for a while.”

Meg stepped closer to him and let him slid his hand under the coat, reveling in the softness of her skin.

“What changed? And don’t say you were so sad about Sky Daddy being absent you just decided to sink into pure hedonism.”

“And why not?” Castiel asked. “Would it make any difference to you if it was that way?”

Meg thought about this for a second. She untied the coat and let it hang loose, revealing her body underneath it.

“I guess not,” she said. She grabbed his hand and directed it where she wanted it to go, spreading her legs just slightly so Castiel’s fingers could find their way into her cunt. “Get to work now, Clarence. You’ve got yours. It’s only fair I get mine.”

Yes, he supposed it was.

She was wet there, and her musky smell invaded his nostrils when he pulled her closer to him. He held her up in place with one hand, squeezing her ass he did, while he explored her depths with his fingers. Meg didn’t give him instructions this time. Maybe it just entertained her to find out what he was and wasn’t willing to do.

The thing was, when he curled his finger a little and hit a sweet spot, when her entire body trembled and she threw her head back, her eyes closed and her lips parted to let a soft moan escape from them… well, Castiel wasn’t sure there _was_ anything he wouldn’t be willing to do.

He circled her clit with his thumb, slow and steady and then a bit faster when her moaning became louder. He kept moving his index and middle finger in and out of her at the same time, letting her juices slide his hand, trying out different motions, different rhythms. He stuck to the ones that got louder reactions from her, analyzing her closely, watching her breathing accelerate and slow down, until…

With one last scream, her knees gave in and she had to grab unto his shoulders not to fall. She was half-sitting in his lap now, her small breasts in his face as she breathed in and out with difficulty.

“Well…” she said. “I _definitely_ know you’re happy to see me now.”

Castiel looked down and wasn’t surprised to know that he’d sprung another erection. The spectacle of her coming was more than enough to do that to him.

Meg didn’t bother to take the coat off before she climbed on his lips and positioned herself over the head of his cock. She had been so impatient, so confident until now that Castiel was surprised to see her stop and hesitate. She looked at him, her eyes wide with interrogation.

In response, Castiel wrapped his arms around her and spun so they would both fall on the bed. He kissed her, artlessly, furious and she responded in kind. Her legs wrapped around his waist, open and welcoming. She was so wet already that he had no trouble at all entering her.

It was a completely different feeling. He hadn’t expected that. Meg’s cunt around him, the way her body seemed to melt against his, how she held onto him, and the deprave words that came rolling out of her tongue; it was all entirely different.

“Fuck me. Move, Castiel, fuck me… _yes!_ ”

It was like the most sacrilegious prayer and he was more than happy to oblige. He pulled almost all the way out and then slammed back into her. No delicacy, no waiting. He knew she could handle his eagerness.

“Yes!” she screamed out as he thrust into her, faster and harder as the pleasure began mounting up again. “Yes, like that! Take me, fuck me!”

It was amazing that she could still talk, that swearing and encouragement could still fall from her mouth so easily. He was too lost in the feeling of her, his heart beating hard against his ribcage, so focused on what he was doing all he could manage was a breathless:

“Meg…”

She sank her nails on his back, hard and cruel.

“Don’t stop. Shit, Cas… like this, yes!”

“Meg…” he repeated, his face sank against her breasts.

He wanted to tell her he couldn’t hold it anymore, it was too much, it was too different, too new, he just couldn’t…

The lights of the room flickered uncontrollably and the entire bed shook with every one of his movements. Meg moved her hands to his cheeks and pulled him for a kiss, her body shuddering in rhythm with his movements.

“Come inside me,” she whispered in his ear. “I want to feel you in me… _oh_!”

Castiel’s body gave in again, submerging him in the blind, white pleasure as he held unto Meg’s body, as she kissed him in the neck and held him tight against her, helping him ride the waves of his pleasure, muttering over and over that he’d done good, that she’d needed that, that yes, yes, yes…

It wasn’t until much later that Castiel realized it wasn’t that his vision had grown tired from how deliciously tired he felt. The one solitary lightbulb in the room had burst just like the ones at the suite.


	11. Importance

“You know what I could really use right now?” Meg commented, laying back on the pillows, her skin exposed, her smirk satisfied. “A smoke. I could really get a smoke.”

Castiel said nothing.

His eyes were fixed on the ceiling above their head. His mind refused to formulate any coherent thoughts.

He hadn’t expected it to be so much more intense, so much better. To be inside of her. To possess her like that. He thought the desire that had consumed him previously would disappear now that it was satiated, but it only made him want to do it again. And again. They had exchanged almost not words, just kisses and bites and scratches. Every time one reached for the other, they knew exactly what they were looking for.

In a way, it was a clean cut. It was pure. Animalistic. And exactly what he’d needed to forget the emptiness settling in his chest.

They’d spent hours in that motel room, Castiel wasn’t certain how many. It wasn’t usual that an angel would lose track of time like that, but he had. The motel’s clerk had come to knock on their door, but any questions of doubts he might have had were assuaged when Meg showed up at the door wearing Castiel’s shirt and slipped him some dollar bills he didn’t know where she got from.

Then they’d got back to fucking one more time.

There was a click by his side, followed by the smell of tobacco raising in the air. He had no idea how she’d used her powers to get the cigarette, but she seemed happy with it.

“Do you get it now?” she asked, casually turning to him on the bed. “Why humans go crazy about this when done right?”

She offered him the cigarette. Castiel thought about rejecting it, but in the end, he figured it couldn’t hurt. He was indulging. He might as well indulge all the way.

“I guess I do,” he said and took a drag.

He didn’t repeat the sentiment that it wouldn’t have been as good, that he didn’t believe he would’ve enjoyed it as much if it hadn’t been with her.

She looked beautiful. Her skin was red in the places where he had nibbled it or where he had held on to her a bit too tight. Her lips were swollen and her hair was puffed and tangled.

She looked… well, thoroughly fucked.

It was a good look on her.

“Don’t look at me like that, Clarence,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to make me want to go again and I’m still recovering from the last round.”

“I wouldn’t mind going again,” he said, passing the cigarette back to her.

Meg held it up between her fingers, not even care about the ash that fell from the tip unto the covers. She then threw her back and barked out a laugh.

“Well, you’ve got some blood in your veins after all, huh?”

“Technically, this aren’t my veins or my blood…”

“Oh, shut up,” she interrupted him. “You’re definitely so much prettier when you’re shutting up.”

She took a long drag and closed her eyes. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve sworn that she was drifting off to sleep.

“So… what happens now?” she asked after a moment, taking another smoke.

“I don’t know,” Castiel said.

He didn’t know if he was asking about them or about Lucifer and the Apocalypse. Either way, the answer would’ve been the same.

“I can’t take you to the Winchesters,” he said, slowly. “They…”

“Yeah, I know. They hate and I can’t say the feeling isn’t mutual.”

“You killed their friends.”

“They killed my brother and my dad,” Meg pointed out. “I’m not saying that makes us even, I’m just saying we’re not gonna be giving each other friendship bracelets any time soon.”

Castiel didn’t bother to ask her how was it that demons had families, because he suspected that Meg wouldn’t care to answer for that question. So he pointed the next best thing.

“You forgave me for throwing you in a circle of holy fire.”

“Says who?” she said, handing him the cigarette again.

He was never going to understand her.

“So you’re really going to stay with them?” she asked. “After the whole Sky Daddy fiasco?”

He would’ve really appreciate if she stopped calling him that, but he figured asking her to would be counterproductive.

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t. You could do what I’m going to do.”

“Which is…?” Castiel asked, surprised that she already had a plan.

“Running away from all of this mess,” she said, with a shrug. “He has better things to do right now than deal with little old me, but I have no doubt in my mind that Lucifer is eventually going to find me and kill me. Then again, that’s going to happen to everyone, isn’t it? So, what’s special about it?” Her smile was bitter. “We might as well just stay alive for as long as we can.”

It was Castiel’s turn to stare at her in shock as he held the cigarette.

“Are you… are you asking me to come with you?”

Meg rolled over to get away from him. She stood up and started picking up her clothes from the floor.

“Meg…” Castiel called her.

“I wouldn’t mind having something to do while the entire world burns,” she said. “And why not, right? I mean, I know that if they win, the angels are going to come after you, but what could your brethren do to us that’s worse than what Lucifer would do when he drags me back to Hell?”

“You underestimate them,” Castiel told her. “They can be… very creative when they want to.”

It was amazing, how detachedly they could talk about the eternal punishment for what they had done. Not just with each other, but… how they had broken away from their roles. From what and who they were supposed to be.

“Still, I’d rather take my chances with them than with Lucifer,” she said. She looked over her shoulder and gestured for him to hand her back the cigarette, which he happily did. “But if I can have my pick, I’ll take my chances with none of them.”

Castiel sat up and stared at the back of her head, at her naked back. She had stopped moving, with her skirt in her hand, like she was hesitant to put it back on and walk out of there.

“So you’re just going to… run away?”

“Part of knowing how to survive is knowing when to make a strategic retreat,” she said, with a shrug. “I’ve become an expert on those lately.”

Castiel remembered Dean’s frustration at Meg surviving their trap. He almost didn’t realize that Meg was looking at him attentively, scanning his face, waiting for his reaction.

“So, what do you say?”

Castiel thought about it. He thought about getting out of there, about going through the world and its wonders one last time before it was all lost. He thought about spending nights like these with her, about getting lost in her over and over. He couldn’t take her to heaven like she’d wanted, but he could take her to planets where they would be the only ones. Just running and running until their luck ran out.

But even as he considered it, he could feel the tug of someone praying to him. Sam. They weren’t in immediate danger, so he could ignore it for the time being.

And he knew already that he had chosen who to take his chances with.

“I can’t.”

“Really?” Meg said, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to go with the damn Winchesters?”

“I have chosen to go out fighting,” he replied. “Against everything. And they’re the only ones crazy enough to actually try to fight this with me.”

“You do realize you have a snowball’s chance in hell, right?”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?”

She stared at him and then she laughed again. No bitterness in it. Just pure entertainment.

“I guess I would,” she replied, with a shrug. She stood up and pulled her skirt up. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where?” Castiel asked, a bit surprised.

“I want to have a drink,” she said, with a shrug. “Wouldn’t mind some sloppy drunk sex with you either.”

“Where would we find enough alcohol to get the both of us drunk?”

“I don’t know.” Meg threw her shirt on and stopped to think about it. “A liquor store, maybe?”

They found one in the very same town where the motel was. Meg broke the chain that kept thieves out and broken down the cameras and the alarms before they started blaring. Then she systematically went through the shelves and came back with two bottles of wine.

“Maybe something stronger?” Castiel suggested.

“You gotta work your way up to that, Clarence,” she explained as she pulled the corks out. “Otherwise you end up plastered too soon.”

He was learning so many things with her.

They went through all the wine and the beers, which barely even did something, before moving on to the harder liquors. Castiel started feeling pleasantly warmth once they hit the whiskey shelves, and Meg was laughing like a fool at something, hitting the surface of the counter in which they were drinking with a flat hand.

“What’s so funny?”

“Fucking Crowley was right!” Meg said. Her giggles turned into full on guffaws as she swallowed the whiskey directly from the bottle. “I hate that he was right. That guy’s the _worst_.”

Castiel nodded.

“I was never fond of Zachariah,” he commented. “He was always… what’s the word I’m looking for? Shady.”

“My, we’re getting sassy over here!” Meg said, laughing again. She opened a new bottle of Scotch and handed it to Castiel. “I bet I could ask you anything right now and you would tell me the truth, huh?”

“Why would that be strange?”

“We’re fighting opposite sides of this war, remember?” she pointed out, and she laughed again as if Castiel forgetting about it was simply the most hilarious thing in the entire world.

Maybe it was. And maybe she was right, that he had to think of her as an enemy. He had done so from the moment she had fallen into his arms. Not just for the cause of saving humanity, but for himself, for what she had awaken in him.

He had already given up on resisting her. Why couldn’t he give up of thinking of her as the enemy? If only for one night.

There wasn’t much damage that could do to them now, anyway. No more than they already were doing themselves.

In a way, accepting that nothing would change just because he spoke to her was almost like admitting that the war itself was lost. He quieted down his guilt with another gulp of liquor.

“I don’t think me badmouthing my superiors will be of much use to you anyway,” he pointed out. “Lucifer is far more powerful than any of them. He is far more powerful than me and the Winchesters.”

“He’s also much more of a dick,” Meg said. Even she seemed surprised by her words. I mean, in the sense that the Winchesters aren’t going to cast you aside the moment you stop being useful to them, right?”

“They should. I’ll be dead weight to them by the time all of this is over.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, Clarence,” she said. She finished the half bottle she had in one gulp and immediately picked up another. “Tell, me which one of them you like the least? I, personally, have a soft spot for Sam.”

“Why?”

“He did a lot for my kind. And also, Dean is a much bigger dick,” Meg said, and she laughed as if this was a very hilarious joke that Castiel wasn’t really getting. “Sam can a wuss, though. I’ve been inside that little head of his. I know exactly how much he would prefer to be living a happy apple-pie life with whatsername, the dead girl.”

He took another sip and seriously reflected on the question. He didn’t know he was supposed to have a favorite between the two brothers, so he was at a loss as to how to answer that question.

“Sam has… very human desires,” he determined in the end. “Dean does, too, though they are different. Much more hedonistic in nature.”

“Yeah, if I had to take one of the two to tango…” She laughed again at the confusion that must have reflected in Castiel’s face.

“Frankly, I find them both… exhausting sometimes. They can’t let go of their petty arguments, even when there’s so many bigger things at stake.”

“Well, that’s humans for you,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. Her words becoming increasingly slurry. “Missing the bigger picture. We’re blessed, in that sense.”

“How do you mean?”

She opened another bottle for him and Castiel realized with a startle that he had drank most of the one he had in his hand. He finished it in a long gulp and picked up the one Meg was offering him.

“We know that nothing matters!” she stated and clank their bottles together in a the bleakest toast ever.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Castiel said, squinting. “Nothing matters inherently, yes, but it matters if we decide that it matters.”

“Oh, fucking spare me,” Meg groaned. “I’ve _been_ in 1940’s Paris and I have no desire to revisit it. Tell me something.” She climbed on the counter, somewhat clumsily, but she managed to sit in such a way that her legs were at each side of his body and she could wrap them around his waist. “Does this matter? Will it matter to you in the long run?”

Castiel had to think about that question carefully. Before he could figure an answer though, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Meg picked up her bottle and swallow it up as he took it out and look at the screen. Sam’s name was flashing on it.

“Duty calls?”

Castiel threw the phone away, took the bottle from Meg’s hand and drank another shot. He was definitely starting to lose himself in the sensation of despair, but what he really wanted to get lost into was her.

“They can wait,” he said and sank his face in her neck. He was aiming for her lips, but he missed somehow. Meg didn’t seem bothered when he started nibbling at her, though.

“Ah, so you fucking matters more than what your friends want you to do,” Meg said, with a cruel laughter.

Castiel didn’t bother to correct her. He’d just decided this was more important, simply because of how ephemeral it truly was.


	12. Snowball's Chance

He didn’t see Meg after that night at the liquor store and he almost didn’t have time to miss her.

Events precipitated as time moved forwards. Not just the Apocalypse, with the move the angels made to bring back the Winchesters youngest brother to serve as Michael’s vessel, and the arrival of the fourth Horseman. The changes he was going through accelerated as well. Wherever Meg had gone, he wouldn’t have been able to follow her as his wings withered and as his conviction that they were anywhere near winning died.

In a way, it was a good thing she didn’t see him again. He was aware of what a pathetic shadow of his former self he had become and how she would laugh at him for letting himself get on that state.

She wouldn’t have been wrong either.

Sometimes, when inactivity crept up and when he was feeling down, he thought about her. He hoped that she had really managed to get away, that she had managed to hide away from Lucifer, that she truly had been as unimportant to him as she felt.

He didn’t have much time to think about Meg, though. The brothers learnt of a way in which they could send Lucifer back to the Cage and collecting the Horsemen’s rings became their utmost priority.

“I have the location of Pestilence,” Castiel had informed the brothers on the phone. “Well, not the location, but a way to find him.”

He was talking from the same hotel room where Lucifer had his base of operations, the same hotel where he’d started giving in to his desire for Meg. In any other occasion, he would’ve hopped over to the Winchesters to tell them this information in person, but flying took more and more out of him every time. He felt exhausted all the time, like his grace, the very thing that made him an angel, dwindled to a dangerously low point.

“Good. Zap over there and meet us, Cas.”

“I…” Castiel started protesting, but then he stopped himself. There was no point to it. They were in what Dean had called “the last stretch” and he needed to get himself to them, no matter how difficult it might be. Besides, his relationship with Dean had been rather tense since Michael had taken Adam. “Yes. I will be there soon.”

The phone ended just as the elevators’ door opened to him. Lucifer walked inside, flanked by two demons. The decay of his vessel had accelerated too, like he too could feel that the end was near and the demon blood he drank by the gallons wasn’t enough to keep him contained anymore. The abscesses in his face had become wider and more grotesque and his skin was constantly a constantly ashen shade of grey.

As usual, Castiel stood with his back very straight, looking at Lucifer with the attention of a soldier that expects orders from his general. However, Lucifer didn’t even acknowledge his presence as he walked towards the minibar and grabbed a whiskey glass. He flailed down on the chair with a long, tired sigh and gestured for his demons to come closer. They each looked at each other with apprehension, but finally one stepped forwards and offered his forearm. Lucifer slashed his skin almost distractedly, ignoring the wince of pain in the demon’s face as the blood started gushing from the wound and filling the glass.

“Castiel,” Lucifer said finally, after the demon had stepped back and he’d taken a sip from his glass. “Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong?”

“Excuse me?” Castiel asked. He didn’t even need to feign his confusion.

“I have tried, with all my might, to convince other angels to come to see my way,” he said, still sipping the blood absentmindedly. “I have even found out there has been some… dissent within my own children. Some who’d stepped away, who have thrown their lot with… the Winchesters.”

He spat their name with utmost contempt, like the mere sound of their name left a bad taste in his mouth.

“They are… stubborn. To oppose you still,” Castiel said, because if he’d discovered one thing about Lucifer, was that he was very susceptible to praise.

“Yes, they are. Stubborn and stupid,” Lucifer added, rolling his eyes. “So, so stupid. You wouldn’t commit a stupidity of the sorts, would you? You were smart enough to read the writing on the wall.”

The way he stared at him made Castiel feel… uneasy. Like Lucifer’s grey eyes could pierce through all of his mental defenses and expose all the secrets he had been keeping from him during the last six months.

“I did what I considered best for myself,” Castiel said.

“Yes.” Lucifer tilted his head. “And you haven’t asked a thing from me.”

“I know you’re busy.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” Lucifer said, with no particular emotion in his tone.

He finished his glass of blood and gestured for one of the demons to come closer. This time the other one, who was using a female meatsuit, came closer and extended her forearm. Lucifer repeated the operation of draining her until the glass was almost full. This time, Castiel kept the eyes in the demon, whose face contorted and changed in a grimace of pain.

He thought about Meg. She wondered what she would think about seeing Lucifer like this, what he’d been reduced to. He wondered if her loyalty would’ve remained, if she’d let her drink from her the way these demons did.

In all that time, Lucifer hadn’t mentioned her obvious absence, nor had he asked Castiel if he’d seen her. It was, as she’d suspected, like she had no importance for him despite being his lieutenant.

“But I have to wonder,” Lucifer said, brining Castiel’s thoughts back to the present. “You’re… waning. I can sense it in you. You even smell a little human now.”

Castiel had no way answer to that, because it was true. He didn’t know how Lucifer could smell it on him, but it was undeniably what was happening to him.

“I am… aware. We knew this would happen, the longer I stayed away from Heaven…”

“Yes, that’s not my point,” Lucifer interrupted him. “My point is… when you first came to me, you were desperate. Humiliated. Willing to do whatever it was necessary for you to remain an angel.”

Castiel didn’t answer to that assessment. He didn’t know what to answer. Had he really seemed so pathetic in Lucifer’s eyes?

The archangel finished his drink and stood up.

“Now, it’s like you’ve… acquiesced,” he explained, squinting his eyes at Castiel. “Like you’ve accepted your fate. I expected you to come beg me from one moment to the other to hurry up, to accelerate the rhythm of my plans because you are running of time. I figured you’d be a little more selfish, that you’ve had a little more of a fight within you.”

“I haven’t stopped fighting,” Castiel assured him. “It’s just that in this front… I think I have no option but to be patient and trust you.”

Lucifer’s lip curved a little to the side, like he was considering that reply.

“Well… I dare say that was your mistake, Castiel.”

His words were like a punch to the gut. Suddenly Castiel was very aware that the demons had moved, ever so slightly, blocking the way to the elevator.

“Acting like you trusted me,” Lucifer explained, even though Castiel hadn’t asked what he’d meant. “I would have believed that act from Meg or from Crowley. But you? You didn’t trust me. You came to me out of despair, but the second you stopped being so desperate… well, I knew something was fishy.”

“Lucifer…” Castiel said, trying to maintain the archangel’s cold, uncaring gaze. “You’re wrong. I am on your side. I am not like those demons who betrayed you or those angels who refuse to listen to you…”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean,” Lucifer interrupted him, his voice sharp and cold. He ran a finger through the edge of his glass and then stuck it in his mouth and sucked, like he wanted to drink up everything to the last drop. “You’re overselling it. If you had stuck with your _‘I just want to be an angel’_ shtick… anyway, I thought you were useful, but since you’re obviously rapidly becoming human and also a traitor, well… I guess this is the end of the line for us, brother.”

He said that last word with the same anger and hate as he’d pronounced the Winchesters name. Castiel didn’t have time to protest or to call for him once again before he turned towards the elevator. Three more demons came out of it. Lucifer didn’t even look at Castiel over his shoulder and he stepped in and the doors closed behind his back.

Castiel knew this wasn’t a test. He knew Lucifer had no intention to let him get away from this. Weakened as he was, against five opponents who were following orders not to let him live…

Well, he had a snowball’s chance in Hell.

He almost smiled at the comparison. It was strange that his thoughts flew to her once more when facing certain death.

The first demon charged at him and Castiel lifted up his blade quickly.

It was brutal. It hurt more than any other battle in his life had hurt. Each of the punches and kicks he received from the demons rippled through his body with a new kind of pain that he’d never experienced. His bones cracked under the pressure, his skin broke and he felt the slickness of his own blood sliding down his face on several occasions.

At one point, when one of the demons managed to grab him with his arm around his throat, pressing down his pipeline, depriving him for air, he really thought he was going to lose this one.

But he managed to win.

He wasn’t sure how, in the flurry of activity that followed him stabbing that demon’s hand, grabbing his arm and swinging him around to where he thought the rest of his assailants were. But he managed to ran towards the elevator and fight his way through the lobby and out to the street.

He was short of breath and the only thing preventing from collapsing was the adrenaline rushing through his veins, which was such a human thing. Stares and glares flew singed his skin as he fled down the street. He could hear the hurried steps of his pursuers behind him, demons still coming after him.

He took a shortcut through an alleyway and at the end of it, he spotted a bus, barreling down the street. He didn’t have a wallet or money of any kind, but the bus stopped when he flagged for it.

It didn’t seem to matter. The driver took one look at him and shook his head.

“Alright. I don’t want to know,” he said, simply.

Castiel’s appearance must have been something intimidating, because several of the passengers moved aside or pointedly avoided trying to look at him as he moved through them until he found an empty seat.

The only one looking at him was an old lady with white hair and a motherly frown of concern in her face.

“You have blood on your coat, dear,” she told him. She sifted through her purse until she found a pack of tissues. “And your face… and your… well…”

“Thank you,” Castiel muttered.

He half-heartedly rubbed one tissue on his face, though he wasn’t too sure it was going to do much for him. He looked out the window and spotted a column of black smoke, raising over the street as the bus turned around the corner. He waited, his hand clutched tightly around the hilt of his sword, but the demons seemed to have lost track of him.

Lucifer would be furious to find that he’d survived the ambush. He wondered why he hadn’t bothered to kill him himself and all he could think was that Lucifer was saving his strength for something bigger, in case Sam continued to say no and he had to fight Michael in his half-decayed vessel. Perhaps he just thought of Castiel as so inferior now that he was nearly human that Lucifer just wouldn’t stoop down to eliminate him. He thought he wasn’t that important, just like he had done with Meg.

Whichever the case, Castiel couldn’t come back. All he could do now was hope that the Winchesters’ plan to collect the rings paid off. It was a long shot still.

But every snowball had its day, Castiel supposed.


	13. Interlude

In the end, it didn’t matter that his time in Lucifer’s “employment” ended so poorly.

Dean and Sam rose to the occasion in ways Castiel hadn’t expected, in ways that he never would’ve been able to hope. Against all that seemed logical, the Apocalypse was stopped.

Sam had to sacrifice his life for that to be possible.

Castiel wasn’t there to see it, as Lucifer had just exploded his vessel, but Bobby assured him that Sam had looked… almost peaceful as he jumped into the Cage, taking the Devil and Michael down with him.

He was left with a lot of questions still.

Who had brought him back? To him it had felt like his consciousness expanding and falling back into shape, all of in an instant. When he opened his eyes again, when he found himself standing in the cemetery again, he understood. Without any need for words or explanation, he knew right away what had happened.

And he knew he was an angel once more. He felt strong again, restored. His vision was clear, his wings were strong and his grace thrummed under his skin with a power he thought he’d never feel again. To a human, he figured the sensation would be comparable to regaining one’s health after a long, terrible illness.

Humanity wasn’t an illness, though. It was terribly fragile, yes, but Castiel thought he understood it a little more now that he’d experienced it, if briefly. He had the Winchesters to thank for that.

And Meg, who had taught him about the “weakness of the flesh”. That had been the pleasurable aspect of it.

The ugly side was that he didn’t feel he would’ve been able to feel as saddened by Sam’s loss as he did if it hadn’t been for that inkling of humanity that he retained.

Maybe that was why he did it. Not out of pride, but out of grief. Even if he knew he no longer had a place among his friends, he could do this one last thing for them.

He didn’t expect Sam to turn away without going to Dean. It left him shocked and confused for a moment, but he maybe this was for the best. Maybe, having done the impossible, it was only right that they all went their separate ways.

In retrospective, that should’ve been his first warning that something was very wrong.

So Castiel returned to Heaven. No one stopped him, no one questioned him. He stationed himself in the eternal Tuesday afternoon of a drowned autistic man. He had always favored that Heaven. It was peaceful, silent. The soul in the distance flew a red kite that soared high in the sky. The park in this man’s memory was beautiful, with green and luscious plants everywhere.

It filled him with a sense of peace he hadn’t known in a very long time.

He didn’t think of Meg. Well, he didn’t think about her often.

He was content. Sam and Dean were content as well. Castiel hoped his demon was, too, wherever she was right now.

The peace didn’t last very long, sadly.

“You’re alive.”

Castiel turned around to find a flock of angels coming to him. They were lead by Rachel, a good soldier he’d known, but not very well. She seemed almost in awe as she spoke to him.

“Yes,” he said, even though he didn’t know what else to add.

It became clear soon that the angels looked up to him. That they expected him to guide them, to explain to them what they were supposed to do with their newfound freedoms. Castiel wasn’t sure that was something that he could really do. Freedom wasn’t something that one could explain. It was something that had to be _experienced_.

Of course, not everyone was glad with what he had done.

Raphael’s power hit him with a cruelty he’d never known. It wasn’t the first time Castiel found himself at the end of an Archangel’s cold, angry glare, and Raphael was not unlike Lucifer in his desire for absolute power, in the self-righteous impression that he deserved it somehow.

“Tomorrow you kneel, Castiel,” he warned him, a snarl of fury upon his face. “Or you and everyone with you, dies.”

Castiel understood. Raphael didn’t just want him dead. That would’ve only caused further dissent against the ranks. Raphael had no intention of making a martyr out of Castiel that could inspire the angels that had believed his message of freedom to rise up. He wanted him defeated, humiliated.

Failing that, though, he wouldn’t have any qualms about destroying him.

And Castiel had no way to survive that.

He didn’t know where Sam was, but he found Dean easily enough. He was still living with Lisa and Ben, a calm, happy life. A life free of monsters and blood, a life he deserved after everything he had done. Castiel stood at the edge of his garden, watching him work on it, invisible and silent.

He thought about Meg once more. He thought about where she could be and hoped once more that she was still out there, somewhere. He wondered… if he had run away with her, if he had gone looking for her instead of returning to Heaven… maybe now he wouldn’t be facing civil war with one of the most powerful beings that still remained in creation.

No, that wasn’t true. He knew that now. The angels and Raphael would have tracked them down either away. Meg wanted to stay away from all of that. Dean wanted it too. Maybe he should do what Sam had done and walk away, because it wasn’t fair to drag anyone else to the conflict he, himself, had created.

He would have to find a way to deal with this alone.

In the end, though, he didn’t have to.

“Ah, Castiel. Angel of Thursday,” a soft voice muttered at his side. “It’s just not your day, is it?”

Crowley stood behind him, with a sufficient smirk on his face. Castiel made no effort to hide his annoyance.

“What are you doing here?”

Crowley’s smile grew wider. That was the second warning that Castiel ignored.

So there he was now, over a year after the Apocalypse that never was, leading a faction in a civil war unlike anything Heaven had known since Lucifer’s rebellion, working with the King of Hell and keeping all manners of secrets from his best friends. It was never his intention to drag Sam and Dean back into the fight, but it had become inevitable, especially when it became apparent that there was something fundamentally wrong with Sam.

The scream of pain he let out after Castiel probed into him echoed through his ears, giving him a pang of guilt that awoke deep in his chest, in his stomach.

“It’s his soul,” he informed Dean, as Sam groaned and panted heavily, still tied to the chair. Dean had felt it was necessary to restrict him and after what Castiel had found out, he was beginning to think perhaps he was right. “It’s gone.”

He could see the disconcert and confusion in both the brothers’ face, but at the same time there was some… underlying relief. Like they both have known from the start there was something wrong, but they hadn’t been able to put their finger on what it was, exactly. Now that they had an answer, they could know how to proceed, they could come up with a plan.

Because that was what the brothers always did. They always came up with something, some strategy, some way to keep on going, no matter what was the threat that they were fighting against.

Castiel kept his mouth quiet, because he feared that they would believe that the threat in this case was him. He hadn’t expected them to understand everything he was doing for starters, but now…

Now he feared they would hate him, they would resent him for what he’d done and had tried to do.

The bliss and contentment that he had hoped for had gone up in smoke, and there was nothing left for him other than the fight, other than the lies.

It was already all wearing down on him when Sam called him down from Heaven again to request his help.

The soullessness had turned him into a creature Castiel barely recognized as his friend.

“I could give a rat’s ass about your little pissing match with Raphael.”

“Listen to me, Sam…”

“No, you listen!” Sam interrupted him. “I don’t care what you’re dealing with up in Heaven. You owe me.”

Those were harsh words to hear but Castiel could scarcely argue against them. He tried anyway.

“You may not care, but believe me…”

“I’m sorry, do you think we’re here to talk this out?”

“Sam, I can’t just…”

“If you don’t help us, I will hunt you down and kill you.”

Castiel knew it was not possible, because his lack of soul prevented Sam from feeling anything, but he could’ve sworn there was an anger under that threat, some furious rage that was hard to contain. It did remind him of Lucifer, in a way. The rage of not getting what he wanted, that coldness.

But Castiel had definitely faced foes worse than Sam.

“Will you, boy?” he asked, taking a step closer to him while holding his gaze. “How?”

Having the sheer impracticality of his threat pointed out to him did nothing to get Sam to back down.

“I don’t know yet. But I will look until I find out, and I don’t sleep.”

He said it matter-of-factly, like he had an unshakeable confidence that, no matter how, he would be able to defeat him. The Sam Castiel had known was arrogant, sometimes, but this was entirely different.

That Sam never would’ve gone against his friends like this.

“You need help, Sam.”

“I need your help,” Sam shot back.

And well, what was Castiel supposed to do at that point? Sam was right and though he felt the pull to Heaven, he felt his soldiers calling out to him… he had no other choice.

Freedom was also about making up for his mistakes.

Though he felt he was making an even bigger mistake by making… provisions before they went against Crowley. The easiest thing would’ve been not to do it and he tried to talk Dean out of it, but the Winchesters’ minds were made up. He knew better than anyone how hard it was going to be to change them.

He expected that, of course. He expected many from this incursion.

He didn’t expect Meg to waltz back into his life that night.

She still used the same meatsuit as the last time. She still had that same smirk up in her lips. And the way she arched her eyebrows when they came face to face was the same.

“Remember me, Clarence?” she asked, tilting her head at him. “’Cause I sure remember you.”


	14. Old Habits

The dawn seemed to come too soon after the long night they’d had. Castiel saw the light seeping in through the prison’s small windows. It looked cold and harsh, and seemed even colder when he snapped his fingers and the body in front of him caught fire.

Crowley had accumulated quite the collection of monsters that he had systematically broken down and tortured in search of an access to Purgatory. Castiel was aware of this and he didn’t exactly feel sorry for them. They were monsters and, more likely than not, killers. They had horrible things and they were now serving a higher purpose, helping him and Crowley find a way to defeat Raphael.

He still felt bad when he approached them, when they scurried to the other end of the cell with eyes wide open in terror a moment before he pressed his hand to their forehead to smite the life out of them, or before he snapped their necks, or set them on fire. Whatever it was needed to make sure their deaths were as quick as they were permanent.

Some tried begging, making him empty promises of future good behavior if he just let them go. Some of them Crowley had tortured badly enough that they didn’t raise their heads when he come in. Some even smiled at him.

It was… hard to see. But at the same time, he was glad he’d taken on this task. He was getting too comfortable before. And now, he needed to confront what he was allowing to happen, what he was a part of.

Meg had kept her distance while they went into the jail, while they stalked its dark, mostly silent walls searching for Crowley. After her initial teasing, she had barely even acknowledge him and perhaps that was for the best. Castiel had never mentioned what had happened between the two of them to the brothers while he was spying on Lucifer, and he was willing to bet she hadn’t mentioned it to the demons that accompanied her now either.

He couldn’t deny though, that her indifference stung. It was the least of his problems, but he’d stared at the back of her head for a very long time… right before they’d heard the hounds coming after them.

“I told you it was a trap!” Dean had exclaimed once they managed to run away and secure the door behind them. They could still hear the growls and the door shaking as the beasts threw their weight against it.

“What do you want, a cupcake?” Meg had replied, annoyed.

They didn’t have many options, especially after discovering Meg was trapped within her body. Sam had taken the demon killing knife out.

“You can see them,” he’d said, offering it to Meg. “Take this. Hold them off. It’s our best shot.”

It was, indeed, the best they could do, but Castiel noticed the split-second hesitation in Meg’s face before she’d swallowed.

“At Crowley,” she’d replied. “Take it and go. You kill the smarmy dick; I’ll hold off the dogs.”

Dean had started asking another question, but Castiel barely paid attention to it. Meg’s hand found the back of his neck, and as if was the most natural thing in the world, as if the year and a half between the last time he’d seen her and now hadn’t existed at all, she pulled him down and her lips met hers.

Castiel had to admit that he was a fool. A sentimental one, at that. He’d thought the fact that he hadn’t immediately wanted her upon seeing her again, the fact that he’d been more surprised than anything else, meant that whatever feelings he had for Meg had vanished, that whatever had happened between the two during the trying time that had been the Apocalypse didn’t matter anymore.

The moment he kissed her again, though, he’d realized his mistakes. The longing, the craving he’d experienced around her was still there, buried underneath layers and layers of anger and pain and worry. He hadn’t thought about Meg since that whole mess started because she had been absent and he’d had so many things to deal with.

But the moment he had her between his arms again, it was like it all came rushing back at once. It was like she could wave his sanity away with such a simple gesture and he couldn’t…

He’d kissed her back, of course. It had been a spur of the moment thing; an impulse he didn’t care to contain after holding back so many other things. He’d slid his tongue on her mouth to taste the ashes, the smoke, that familiar scent that he’d missed for so long. She’d held on to him tightly, so tightly that Castiel thought maybe this was the resolution to everything that had been left unsaid when they met again.

It broke his heart a little to think that maybe Meg was doing this because she wasn’t expecting to survive her encounter with the Hounds.

She was breathing heavily when he’d finally let her go.

“What was that?” she asked, as if they had never done that and more before.

Castiel had taken a moment to assess the mood in the room, something that he wasn’t always great at. Sam and Dean were staring at them with surprised and mild horror on their faces. Meg had her head tilted at him. The Hounds were still barking at the other side of the door.

Castiel had cleared his throat, awkwardly, and said the first excuse that came to mind.

“I… I learned that from the pizza man…”

This only seemed to confuse Meg further for a moment, before she shrugged.

“Well, A plus for you. I feel so… clean.” She grimaced and raised Castiel’s angel blade. “Alright, gotta go.”

Castiel barely had time to be surprised before Dean grabbed him by the arm and yanked him away. The Hounds barking had become louder and louder…

The Djinn died silently. She looked like a woman, with wild curly hair and a thin frame, but the tattoos in her arms gave her real nature away. She had looked at Castiel with big empty eyes before the touch of his grace had burned them away.

Now that he had time to think about it all, he supposed he should be creating a new strategy, a new way to keep the Winchesters in the dark, he should be regrouping and reconsidering how to finally defeat Raphael.

Instead, his mind went back over and over towards Meg. How she’d run right after the confrontation with Crowley, how she hadn’t even looked at him as she disappeared in thin air once more. Perhaps she’d sensed that Sam and Dean weren’t going to be so forgiving of her now that she was likely the next demon to cause them headaches again. Perhaps… she simply hadn’t wanted to talk to Castiel.

What could they talk about, anyway?

Her kiss had been a ploy. A distraction to steal away his blade. Nothing more.

But still, it had felt just like before…

“They always leave you do the dirty work, eh, Clarence?”

She was standing right outside of the cell, leaning against the wall. She had his blade in his hand and, as if it wasn’t one of the most dangerous weapons in the world, something that could kill her permanently, she was using the tips to clean her nails.

“Where was that?” Castiel asked.

He had looked for it on the armory, and the room where Dean had said he’d found Meg after Crowley’s lackeys had found her and taken her, but he’d seen no traces of it. He’d searched the prison top to bottom, but his blade had been nowhere to be found. Which made sense, if she’d had it all along.

Meg smirked at him, that smile he was already so familiar with.

“I grabbed it on my way out in case I had trouble finding the exit, but you and the boys made sure I didn’t need it,” she explained. “Aren’t you all a bunch of gentlemen?”

Castiel came out of the cell and walk up to her. He stretched his hands towards the blade, but Meg held it out of his grasp, still smiling mockingly.

“Come on, Clarence, is that really how you say hi?”

“We’ve already…” Castiel started protesting.

“In front of them, sure,” Meg pointed out, laughing. “I didn’t think you wanted Dumb and Dumber to know what you and I got up to while you were pretending to be on Lucifer’s side, but then you went and made a girl feel all sort of things…”

This time she let him trap her wrist in a fiery grip. She was still smiling up at him as his eyes bored down on her.

“So many dirty little secrets you keep, angel.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Castiel said, tightening his grip. A sharp pain crossed her expression briefly, but she didn’t let go of the blade.

“Sure you do. There’s me… and then there’s also Crowley.”

Castiel made sure no muscle in his face so as to not give away the whirlwind of emotions he was experienced. How? How could she possibly know…?

“It’s been a few hours,” she pointed out. “And Hell’s not falling apart without Dear Leader. It’s weird, isn’t it? That the King is dead but no one is running around with their heads on fire… it’s almost like he didn’t really die, just… made a strategic retreat.”

He could still burn her. He should have done it ages ago.

“I don’t…”

“Cut the crap, Castiel,” she interrupted him. The teasing smile disappeared from her face, replaced by a hard look in her eyes. “What the hell are you doing with Crowley?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is when my life is on the line too!” she argued.

She tried to escape him, but Castiel didn’t let go. She raised her other hand, but Castiel stopped her fist before it could come anywhere near his face. He pinned both her wrists against the grey, hard wall. Meg’s eyes revealed the pure fury she felt, but she stopped struggling and just glared at him.

She still had… this pull on him. Even now, even as he realized she could put his entire strategy at risk, even as he told himself again and again that she was a risk…

He had trouble keeping his eyes from wandering down her body, keeping his mouth away from hers. He remembered all too clearly those brief moments of pleasure they’d shared together, those moments when she had been his and he’d been hers.

“What were you doing with Lucifer’s loyalists?” Castiel asked. “I thought you’d… renounced him.”

“Well, apparently that was too little, too late,” Meg explained, with a shrug. “When Crowley Order-66’ed Hell to take on the throne, I was on the list of Lucifer’s most trusted. So everyone else on Crowley’s sights flocked to me. I wanted nothing to do with all of that mess!” She let out a hollow laughter, devoid of any mirth. “But here I am, fighting for my life _again_. I’m just doing what I have to, not that I would’ve ever served a dick like Crowley to begin with.”

Castiel watched her closely, considering her words. It seemed like the more he told himself they were different, the more he tried to fight his attraction towards meg, the more he realized he was lying to himself.

They were similar. They were too similar.

She was still staring up at him, almost defiantly.

“What are you doing, Castiel?” she insisted.

“I’m doing what I have to,” he said, lowering his voice. “To save everyone.”

“To save yourself.”

Castiel let go of her wrists to put his hands down on her hips. Meg didn’t try to stop him.

“Do you trust Crowley?” she asked.

“What’s the saying? Only as far as I can throw him,” he replied.

A glimmer of triumph appeared in Meg’s eyes and Castiel realized too late that he’d just confirmed two things she only merely suspected before: that Crowley was still alive and that they were working together.

“Guess working with a demon is not that far removed from fucking one, huh?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

Castiel didn’t know how to put his answers into words, so instead he lowered his head and kissed her again. The angel blade clattered on the ground when she let go of it.

Meg wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth, moaning softly as he slid his hands up her shirt to take it off.

And suddenly he couldn’t help but to be all over her again, unbridled, unrestrained, not like before. There was no one to see them here, no one to judge them.

It was so, so easy to fall back into old habits again.

She undid his tie and fought with the buttons of his shirt before Meg decided she didn’t really care about them. Her hands travelled down to pat the growing hardness in his slack before releasing it with an expert movement.

“I’ve missed you too,” she said, with a laugh.

With a groan, Castiel undid the button of her jeans and pulled them down. She hadn’t bothered with underwear, of course. Meg wrapped her legs around his waist as he hoisted her up. She screamed out when he penetrated her, throwing her head back. The moans that escaped from her lips echoed around the prison’s sordid emptiness.

It was blinding, this passion. No matter how much Castiel tried to fight it, no matter how much he told himself there could be terrible consequences for him. He just couldn’t stop wanting her.

He wasn’t gentle with her. He knew she could take it, all his accumulated despair, all the worry and fury that had been plaguing him for the past year. He unloaded it on her as he thrusted against her writhing body, again and again. Meg’s hands clutched at his trench coat, her teeth closed on his ear. She was all over him, as savage and demanding as before…

Pleasure came unexpectedly, shooting out of him with a suddenness that left him shaking. Meg also let out one of last moan as her body shuddered in his arms.

No, all was not yet said between the two of them. Castiel didn’t know if he was happy about it or not.

He put her down, but had to grab her elbow when her knees almost gave out.

“Damn, Clarence, were you saving all of that for me?” she laughed as she started picking up her clothes.

Castiel turned his back on her and tucked his cock back into his pants. He wasn’t afraid that she was going to disappear while he did. Well, he was almost sure she wouldn’t.

“That was a nice distraction, I’ll give you that,” she said. Her steps came up to him and her arms slithered around him. She pulled him close, in what might have been a hug, if he hadn’t known that she was always calculating with her shows of affection. Like now, when she planted a kiss on his neck before whispering in his ear. “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing with Crowley.”

Castiel grabbed her hand and took it up to his lips. She tasted like sweat and despite the short time, he felt another surge of desire go through him.

“The same thing as you, I guess,” he replied. “What I have to do.”

He turned around and lassoed an arm around her waist. Meg seemed pensive, like she needed to think about those words for a moment. She placed a hand on his cheek and caressed his skin in slow circles with her thumb.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “We might be able to help each other again, Clarence.”

Castiel really hoped so. He was sure, of all the people in his life, Meg might have been the only one who could really understand the predicament he was in. And if he had to choose a demon to work with, he would much rather have it be her.


End file.
